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/t¥iE RELATION OFi^^C 
LITERiVrURE TO LIFE 






C.D.WARNER 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. _: , Copyr^t No. 



UNJTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE RELATION 

OF 

LITERATURE TO LIFE 



BY 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 







^r. ''^^ 



''^V 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1897 



\ 



By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 



THE GOLDEN HOUSE. IlluBtrated. Post 8vo, 
Half Leather, $2 00. 

A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD. Post 
8vo, Half Leather, $1 50 ; Paper, 75 cents. 

THEIR PILGRIMAGE. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Half 
Leather, $2 00. 

STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST. Post Svo, 
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OUR ITALY. Illustrated. Svo, Cloth, $2 50. 

AS WE GO. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

AS WE WERE SAYING. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 
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THE WORK OF WASHINGTON IRVING. Illus- 
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PtTELiSHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 



Copyright, 1895, by Hakpee & Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 



NOTE 



The paper that gives the title to this volume 
of essays has not been printed before. The 
other papers have appeared from time to time 
in the Atlantic Monthly and the Century Maga- 
zine, and I desire to express my sincere thanks 
for the privilege of reproducing them. They 
have been selected for their general relation to 
the theme of the title essay, that is to say, the 
connection between our literary, educational, 
and social progress. The dates of their first 
publication are given in explanation of the al- 
lusions to passing events. 

CD. W. 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Relation of Literature to Lite . . 1 

Simplicity 43 

"Equality" 57 

What is Your Culture to Me? .... 99 

Modern Fiction 133 

Thoughts Suggested by Mr. Froude's 

"Progress" 169 

England 207 

The English Volunteers during the Late 

Invasion 243 

The Novel and the Common School . . 261 

A Night in the Garden of the Tuileries . 297 



THE KELATION OF LITERATURE TO 
LIFE 



THE KELATION OF LITEEATURE TO 
LIFE 

[This paper was prepared and delivered at several 
of our universities as introductory to a course of five 
lectures which insisted on the value of literature in 
common lif e — - some hearers thought with an exag- 
gerated emphasis— and attempted to maintain the thesis 
that all genuine, enduring literature is the outcome of 
the time that produces it, is responsive to the general 
sentiment of its time ; that this close relation to hu- 
man life insures its welcome ever after as a true rep- 
resentation of human nature ; and that consequently 
the most remunerative method of studying a litera- 
ture is to study the people for whom it was produced. 
Illustrations of this were drawn from the Greek, the 
French, and the English literatures. This study al- 
ways throws a flood of light upon the meaning of the 
text of an old author, the same light that the reader 
unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with 
the life with which he is familiar. The reader can test 
this by taking up his Shakespeare after a thorough in- 



s 

4 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

vestigation of the customs, manners, and popular life 
of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is 
true that good literature is an open door into the life 
and mode of thought of the time and place where it 
originated.] 



I HAD a vision once — you may all have had 
a like one — of the stream of time flowing 
through a limitless land. Along its banks 
sprang up in succession the generations of 
man. They did not move with the stream — 
they lived their lives and sank away ; and al- 
ways below them new generations appeared, 
to play their brief parts in what is called his- 
tory — the sequence of human actions. The 
stream flowed on, opening for itself forever a 
way through the land. I saw that these suc- 
cessive dwellers on the stream were busy in 
constructing and setting afloat vessels of vari- 
ous size and form and rig — arks, galleys, gal- 
leons, sloops, brigs, boats propelled by oars, by 
sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which 
each builder launched his venture, and watched 
its performance and progress. The anxiety 
was to invent and launch something that should 
float on to the generations to come, and carry 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 5 

the name of the builder and the fame of his 
generation. It was almost pathetic, these 
puny efforts, because faith always sprang 
afresh in the success of each new venture. 
Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to 
be launched at all ; they sank like lead, close 
to the shore. Others floated out for a time, 
and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled 
over and disappeared. Some, not weU put to- 
gether, broke into fragments in the buffeting 
of the waves. Others danced on the flood, 
taking the sun on their sails, and went away 
with good promise of a long voyage. But 
only a few floated for any length of time, and 
stifl fewer were ever seen by the generation 
succeeding that which launched them. The 
shores of the stream were strewn with wrecks ; 
there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of 
many a once gallant craft. 

Innumerable were the devices of the build- 
ers to keep their inventions afloat. Some paid 
great attention to the form of the hull, others 
to the kind of cargo and the loading of it, 
while others— and these seemed the majority- 
trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new 
fashion of rudder, or new application of pro- 
pelling power. And it was wonderful to see 
what these new ingenuities did for a time, and 



6 RELATION OF LITEEATUBE TO LIFE 

how each generation was deceived into the be- 
lief that its products would sail on forever. But 
one fate practically came to the most of them. 
They were too heavy, they were too light, 
they were built of old material, and they went 
to the bottom, they went ashore, they broke 
up and floated in fragments. And especially 
did the crafts built in imitation of something 
that had floated down from a previous gen- 
eration come to quick disaster. I saw only 
here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and 
blackened by time — so old, perhaps, that the 
name of the maker was no longer legible ; or 
some fragments of antique wood that had ev- 
idently come from far up the stream. "When 
such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise 
great dispute about it, and from time to time 
expeditions were organized to ascend the river 
and discover the place and circumstances of its 
origin. Along the banks, at intervals, whole 
fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore, 
and were piled up in bays, like the drift-wood 
of a subsided freshet. Efforts were made to 
dislodge these from time to time and set 
them afloat again, newly christened, with 
fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a better 
chance of the voyage than any new ones. In- 
deed, I saw that a large part of the commerce 



EELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 7 

of this river was, in fact, the old hulks and 
stranded wrecks that each generation had set 
afloat again. As I saw it in this foolish vis- 
ion, how pathetic this labor was from genera- 
tion to generation ; so many vessels launched ; 
so few making a voyage even for a lifetime ; 
so many builders confident of immortality; 
so many lives outlasting this coveted reputa- 
tion! And still the generations, each with 
touching hopefulness, busied themselves with 
this child's play on the banks of the stream ; 
and still the river flowed on, whelming and 
wrecking the most of that so confidently com- 
mitted to it, and bearing only here and there, 
on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shin- 
gle. 

These hosts of men whom I saw thus occu- 
pied since history began were authors ; these 
vessels were books ; these heaps of refuse in 
the bays were great libraries. The allegory 
admits of any amount of ingenious parallel- 
ism. It is nevertheless misleading ; it is the 
illusion of an idle fancy. I have introduced it 
because it expresses, with some whimsical ex- 
aggeration — not much more than that of " The 
Vision of Mirza" — the popular notion about 
literature and its relation to human life. In 
the popular conception, literature is as much a 



8 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

thing apart from life as these boats on the 
stream of time were from the existence, the 
struggle, the decay of the generations along 
the shore. I say in the popular conception, 
for literature is wholly different from this, not 
only in its effect upon individual lives, but 
upon the procession of lives upon this earth ; 
it is not only an integral part of all of them, 
but, with its sister arts, it is the one unceasing 
continuity in history. Literature and art are 
not only the records and monuments made by 
the successive races of men, not only the local 
expressions of thought and emotion, but they 
are, to change the figure, the streams that flow 
on, enduring, amid the passing show of men, 
reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleet- 
ing generations. Without this continuity of 
thought and emotion, history would present 
us only a succession of meaningless experi- 
ments. The experiments fail, the experiments 
succeed — at any rate, they end — and what re- 
mains for transmission, for the sustenance of 
succeeding peoples ? IS'othing but the thought 
and emotion evolved and expressed. It is true 
that every era, each generation, seems to have 
its peculiar work to do ; it is to subdue the in- 
tractable earth, to repel or to civilize the bar- 
barians, to settle society in order, to build cities, 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 9 

'to amass wealth in centres, to make deserts 
bloom, to construct edifices such as were never 
made before, to bring all men within speaking 
distance of each other — lucky if they have 
anything to say when that is accomplished — 
to extend the information of the few among 
the many, or to multiply the means of easy 
and luxurious living. Age after age the world 
labors for these things with the busy absorp- 
tion of a colony of ants in its castle of sand. 
And we must confess that the process, such, 
for instance, as that now going on here — this 
onset of many peoples, which is transforming 
the continent of America — is a spectacle to ex- 
cite the imagination in the highest degree. If 
there were any poet capable of putting into 
an epic the spirit of this achievement, what an 
epic would be his ! Can it be that there is any- 
thing of more consequence in life than the 
great business in hand, which absorbs the 
vitality and genius of this age ? Surely, we 
say, it is better to go by steam than to go 
afoot, because we reach our destination sooner 
— getting there quickly being a supreme ob- 
ject. It is well to force the soil to yield a 
hundred-fold, to congregate men in masses so 
that all their energies shall be taxed to bring 
food to themselves, to stimulate industries, 



10 EELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

drag coal and metal from the bowels of the 
earth, cover its surface with rails for swift- 
running carriages, to build ever larger palaces, 
warehouses, ships. This gigantic achievement 
strikes the imagination. 

If the world in which you live happens to 
be the world of books, if your pursuit is to 
know what has been done and said in the 
world, to the end that your own conception of 
the value of life may be enlarged, and that 
better things may be done and said hereafter, 
this world and this pursuit assume supreme im- 
portance in your mind. But you can in a mo- 
ment place yourself in relations — you have not 
to go far, perhaps only to speak to your next 
neighbor — where the very existence of your 
world is scarcely recognized. All that has 
seemed to you of supreme importance is ig- 
nored. You have entered a world that is 
called practical, where the things that we have 
been speaking of are done ; you have interest 
in it and sympathy with it, because your 
scheme of life embraces the development of 
ideas into actions ; but these men of realities 
have only the smallest conception of the world 
that seems to you of the highest importance ; 
and, further, they have no idea that they owe 
anything to it, that it has ever influenced their 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 11 

lives or can add anything to them. And it 
may chance that you have, for the moment, a 
sense of insignificance in the small part you 
are playing in the drama going forward. Go 
out of your library, out of the small circle of 
people who talk of books, who are engaged in 
research, whose liveliest interest is in the prog- 
ress of ideas, in the expression of thought and 
emotion that is in literature ; go out of this at- 
mosphere into a region where it does not exist, 
it may be into a place given up to commerce 
and exchange, or to manufacturing, or to the 
development of certain other industries, such 
as mining, or the pursuit of office — which is 
sometimes called politics. You will speedily 
be aware how completely apart from human 
life literature is held to be, how few people re- 
gard it seriously as a necessary element in life, 
as anything more than an amusement or a 
vexation. I have in mind a mountain district, 
stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruth- 
less lumbermen, ravished of its forest wealth, 
divested of its beauty, which has recently be- 
come the field of vast coal-mining operations. 
Kemote from communication, it was yester- 
day an exhausted, wounded, deserted country. 
To-day audacious railways are entering it, 
crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding its 



12 RELATION OF LITEEATUKE TO LIFE 

dizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron 
cobwebs, piercing its hills with tunnels. Drifts 
are opened in its coal seams, to which iron 
tracks shoot away from the main line ; in the 
woods is seen the gleam of the engineer's 
level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden 
wagons on the newly-made roads ; tents are 
pitched, uncouth shanties have sprung up, 
great stables, boarding-houses, stores, work- 
shops ; the miner, the blacksmith, the mason, 
the carpenter have arrived ; households have 
been set up in temporary barracks, children 
are already there who need a school, women 
who must have a church and society; the 
stagnation has given place to excitement, 
money has flowed in, and everywhere are the 
hum of industry and the swish of the goad of 
American life. On this hillside, which in June 
was covered with oaks, is already in October 
a town ; the stately trees have been felled ; 
streets are laid out and graded and named; 
there are a hundred dwellings, there are a store, 
a post-office, an inn ; the telegraph has reached 
it, and the telephone and the electric light ; in 
a few weeks more it will be in size a city, with 
thousands of people — a town made out of hand 
by drawing men and women from other towns, 
civilized men and women, who have voluntarily 



RELATION OF LITEBATUBE TO LIFE 13 

put themselves in a position where they must 
be civilized over again. 

This is a marvellous exhibition of what ener- 
gy and capital can do. You acknowledge as 
much to the creators of it. You remember 
that not far back in history such a transfor- 
mation as this could not have been wrought 
in a hundred years. This is really life, this is 
doing something in the world, and in the pres- 
ence of it you can see why the creators of it 
regard your world, which seemed to you so im- 
portant, the world whose business is the evolu- 
tion and expression of thought and emotion, as 
insignificant. Here is a material addition to 
the business and wealth of the race, here em- 
ployment for men who need it, here is indus- 
try replacing stagnation, here is the pleasure 
of overcoming difficulties and conquering ob- 
stacles. Why encounter these difficulties ? In 
order that more coal may be procured to op- 
erate more railway trains at higher speed, to 
supply more factories, to add to the industrial 
stir of modern life. The men who projected 
and are pushing on this enterprise, with an ex- 
ecutive ability that would maintain and ma- 
noeuvre an army in a campaign, are not, how- 
ever, consciously philanthropists, moved by 
the charitable purpose of giving employment 



14 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

to men, or finding satisfaction in making two 
blades of grass grow where one grew before. 
They enjoy no doubt the sense of power in 
bringing things to pass, the feeling of leader- 
ship and the consequence derived from its rec- 
ognition ; but they embark in this enterprise 
in order that they may have the position and 
the luxury that increased wealth will bring, 
the object being, in most cases, simply material 
advantages : sumptuous houses, furnished with 
all the luxuries which are the signs of wealth, 
including, of course, libraries and pictures and 
statuary and curiosities, the most showy equi- 
pages and troops of servants; the object be- 
ing that their wives shall dress magnificently, 
glitter in diamonds and velvets, and never 
need to put their feet to the ground ; that they 
may command the best stalls in the church, 
the best pews in the theatre, the choicest 
rooms in the inn, and — a consideration that 
Plato does not mention, because his world was 
not our world — that they may impress and re- 
duce to obsequious deference the hotel clerk. 

This life— for this enterprise and its objects 
are types of a considerable portion of life — 
is not without its ideal, its hero, its highest 
expression, its consummate flower. It is ex- 
pressed in a word which I use without any 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 15 

sense of its personality, as the French use the 
word Barnum — for our crude young nation 
has the distinction of adding a verb to the 
French language, the verb to larmom — it is 
expressed in the well-known name Croesus. 
This is a standard — impossible to be reached 
perhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, 
the country is sown with seeds of Croesus, and 
the crop is forward and promising. The in- 
terest to us now in the observation of this 
phase of modern life is not in the least for 
purposes of satire or of reform. /We are in- 
quiring how wholly this conception of life is 
divorced from the desire to learn what has 
been done and said to the end that better 
things may be done and said hereafter, in order 
that Ave may understand the popular concep- 
tion of the insignificant value of literature in 
human affairs. But it is not aside from our 
subject, rather right in its path, to take heed 
of what the philosophers say of the effect in 
other respects of the pursuit of wealth, r 

One cause of the decay of the power of de- 
fence in a state, says the Athenian Stranger in 
Plato's Laws — one cause is the love of wealth, 
which wholly absorbs men and never for a 
moment allows them to think of anything but 
their private possessions ; on this the soul of 



16 RELATION OF LITEEATURE TO LIFE 

every citizen hangs suspended, and can attend 
to nothing but his daily gain; mankind are 
ready to learn any branch of knowledge and 
to follow any pursuit which tends to this end, 
and they laugh at any other ; that is the rea- 
son why a city will not be in earnest about 
war or any other good and honorable pursuit. 

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of 
private individuals, says Socrates, in the Re- 
^public, is the ruin of democracy. They in- 
vent illegal modes of expenditure ; and what 
do they or their wives care about the law ? 

" And then one, seeing another's display, 
proposes to rival him, and thus the whole 
body of citizens acquires a similar character. 

" After that they get on in a trade, and the 
more they think of making a fortune, the less 
they think of virtue ; for when riches and virtue 
are placed together in the balance, the one 
always rises as the other falls. 

" And in proportion as riches and rich men 
are honored in the state, virtue and the virtu- 
ous are dishonored. 

"And what is honored is cultivated, and 
that which has no honor is neglected. 

" And so at last, instead of loving contention 
and glory, men become lovers of trade and 
money, and they honor and reverence the rich 



/, 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 17 

man and make a ruler of him, and dishonor 
the poor man. 

" They do so." 

The object of a reasonable statesman (it is 
Plato who is really speaking in the Laws) is 
not that the state should be as great and rich 
as possible, should possess gold and silver, and 
have the greatest empire by sea and land. 

The citizen must, indeed, be happy and good, 
and the legislator will seek to make him so ; 
but very rich and very good at the same time 
he cannot be ; not at least in the sense in which 
many speak of riches. For they describe by 
the term " rich " the few who have the most 
valuable possessions, though the owner of them 
be a rogue. And if this is true, I can never 
assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be 
happy : he must be good as well as rich. And 
good in a high degree and rich in a high degree 
at the same time he cannot be. Some one will 
ask. Why not ? And we shall answer. Because 
acquisitions which come from sources which 
are just and unjust indifferently are more than 
double those which come from just sources 
only; and the sums which are expended neither 
honorably nor disgracefully are only half as 
great as those which are expended honorably 
and on honorable purposes. Thus if one ac- 



18 KELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

quires double and spends half, the other, Avho 
is in the opposite case and is a good man, can- 
not possibly be wealthier than he. The first 
(I am speaking of the saver, and not of the 
spender) is not always bad ; he may indeed 
in some cases be utterly bad, but as I was say- 
ing, a good man he never is. For he who re- 
ceives money unjustly as well as justly, and 
spends neither justly nor unjustly, will be a 
rich man if he be also thrifty. On the other 
hand, the utterly bad man is generally profli- 
gate, and therefore poor ; while he who spends 
on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just 
means only, can hardly be remarkable for 
riches any more than he can be very poor. 
The argument, then, is right in declaring that 
the very rich are not good, and if they are not 
good they are not happy. 

And the conclusion of Plato is that we ought 
not to pursue any occupation to the neglect of 
that for which riches exist — " I mean," he says, 
" soul and body, which without gymnastics and 
without education will never be worth any- 
thing ; and therefore, as we have said not once 
but man}'- times, the care of riches should have 
the last place in our thoughts." 

Men cannot be happy unless they are good, 
and they cannot be good unless the care of 



RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 19 

the soul occupies the first place in their 
thoughts. That is the first interest of man ; 
the interest in the body is midway ; and last 
of all, when rightly regarded, is the interest 
about money. 

The majority of mankind reverses this order 
of interests, and therefore it sets literature to 
one side as of no practical account in human 
life. More than this, it not only drops it out 
of mind, but it has no conception of its influ- 
ence and power in the very affairs from which 
it seems to be excluded. It is my purpose to 
show not only the close relation of literature 
to ordinary life, but its eminent position in 
life, and its saving power in lives which do not 
suspect its influence or value. Just as it is 
virtue that saves the state, if it be saved, al- 
though the majority do not recognize it and 
attribute the salvation of the state to energy, 
and to obedience to the laws of political econo- 
my, and to discoveries in science, and to finan- 
cial contrivances; so it is that in the life of 
generations of men, considered from an ethical 
and not from a religious point of view, the 
most potent and lasting influence for a civiliza- 
tion that is worth anything, a civilization that 
does not by its own nature work its decay, is 
that which I call literature. 



20 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

It is time to define what we mean by litera- 
ture. We may arrive at the meaning by the 
definition of exclusion. "We do not mean all 
books, but some books ; not all that is written 
and published, but only a small part of it. We 
do not mean books of law, of theology, of pol- 
itics, of science, of medicine, and not neces- 
sarily books of travel, or adventure, or biog- 
raphy, or fiction even. These may all be 
ephemeral in their nature. The term helles- 
lettres does not fully express it, for it is too 
narrow. In books of law, theology, politics, 
medicine, science, travel, adventure, biography, 
philosophy, and fiction there may be passages 
that possess, or the whole contents may pos- 
sess, that quality which comes within our 
meaning of literature. It must have in it 
something of the enduring and the universal. 
When we use the term, art, we do not mean the 
arts ; we are indicating a quality that may be 
in any of the arts. In art and literature we 
require not only an expression of the facts in 
nature and in human life, but of feehng, 
thought, emotion. There must be an appeal 
to the universal in the race. It is, for exam- 
ple, impossible for a Christian to-day to under- 
stand what the religious system of the Egyp- 
tians of three thousand years ago was to the 



RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 21 

Egyptian mind, or to grasp the idea conveyed 
to a Chinaman's thought in the phrase, " the 
worship of the principle of heaven "; but the 
Christian of to-day comprehends perfectly the 
letters of an Egyptian scribe in the time of 
Thotmes III., who described the comical mis- 
eries of his campaign with as clear an appeal 
to universal human nature as Horace used in 
his Iter Brxindusium ; and the maxims of 
Confucius are as comprehensible as the bitter- 
sweetness of Thomas a Kempis. De Quincey 
distinguishes between the literature of knowl- 
edge and the literature of power. The defini- 
tion is not exact ; but we may say that the one 
is a statement of what is known, the other is 
an emanation from the man himself ; or that 
one may add to the sum of human knowledge, 
and the other addresses itself to a higher want 
in human nature than the want of knowledge. 
We select and set aside as literature that which 
is original, the product of what we call genius. 
As I have said, the subject of a production does 
not always determine the desired quality which 
makes it literature. A biography may con- 
tain all the facts in regard to a man and his 
character, arranged in an orderly and compre- 
hensible manner, and yet not be literature ; but 
it may be so written, like Plutarch's Lives or 



22 EELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LITE 

Defoe's account of Kobinson Crusoe, that it 
is literature, and of imperishable value as a 
picture of human life, as a satisfaction to the 
want of the human mind which is higher than 
the want of knowledge. And this contribu- 
tion, which I desire to be understood to mean 
when I speak of literature, is precisely the 
thing of most value in the lives of the major- 
ity of men, whether they are aware of it or 
not. It may be weighty and profound ; it may 
be light, as light as the fall of a leaf or a bird's 
song on the shore ; it may be the thought of 
Plato when he discourses of the character nec- 
essary in a perfect state, or of Socrates, who, 
out of the theorem of an absolute beauty, 
goodness, greatness, and the like, deduces the 
immortality of the soul ; or it may be the love- 
song of a Scotch ploughman : but it has this 
one quality of answering to a need in human 
nature higher than a need for facts, for knowl- 
edge, for wealth. 

In noticing the remoteness in the popular 
conception of the relation of literature to life, 
we must not neglect to take into account what 
may be called the arrogance of culture, an ar- 
rogance that has been emphasized, in these 
days of reaction from the old attitude of liter- 
ary obsequiousness, by harsh distinctions and 



BELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 23 

hard words, which are paid back by equally 
emphasized contempt. The apostles of light 
regard the rest of mankind as barbarians and 
Philistines, and the world retorts that these 
self -constituted apostles are idle word -mon- 
gers, without any sympathy with humanity, 
critics and jeerers who do nothing to make the 
conditions of life easier. It is natural that 
every man should magnify the circle of the 
world in which he is active and imagine that 
all outside of it is comparatively unimportant. 
Everybody who is not a drone has his sufBcient 
world. To the lawyer it is his cases and the 
body of law, it is the legal relation of men that 
is of supreme importance; to the merchant and 
manufacturer all the world consists in buying 
and selling, in the production and exchange of 
products ; to the physician all the world is dis- 
eased and in need of remedies ; to the clergy- 
man speculation and the discussion of dogmas 
and historical theology assume immense im- 
portance ; the politician has his world, the art- 
ist his also, and the man of books and letters a 
realm still apart from all others. And to each 
of these persons what is outside of his world 
seems of secondary importance ; he is absorbed 
in his own, which seems to him all-embracing. 
To the lawyer everybody is or ought to be a 



24 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

litigant; to the grocer the world is that which 
eats, and pays — with more or less regularity ; 
to the scholar the world is in books and ideas. 
One realizes how possessed he is with his own 
little world only when by chance he changes 
his profession or occupation and looks back 
upon the law, or politics, or journalism, and 
sees in its true proportion what it was that 
once absorbed him and seemed to him so large. 
When Socrates discusses Avith Gorgias the 
value of rhetoric, the use of which, the latter 
asserts, relates to the greatest and best of hu- 
man things, Socrates says: I dare say you 
have heard men singing at feasts the old 
drinking-song, in which the singers enumerate 
the goods of life — first, health ; beauty next ; 
thirdly, wealth honestly acquired. The pro- 
ducers of these things — the physician, the 
trainer, the money-maker — each in turn con- 
tends that his art produces the greatest good. 
Surely, says the physician, health is the great- 
est good; there is more good in my art, says 
the trainer, for my business is to make men 
beautiful and strong in body; and consider, 
says the money-maker, whether any one can 
produce a greater good than wealth. But, in- 
sists Gorgias, the greatest good of men, of 
which I am the creator, is that which gives 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 25 

men freedom in their persons, and the power 
of ruling over others in their several states — 
that is, the word which persuades the judge 
in the court, or the senators in the council, or 
the citizens in the assembly : if you have the 
power of uttering this word, you will have the 
physician your slave, and the trainer your 
slave, and the money-maker of whom you 
talk will be found to gather treasures, not for 
himself, but for those who are able to speak 
and persuade the multitude. 

What we call life is divided into occupations 
and interests, and the horizons of mankind 
are bounded by them. It happens naturally 
enough, therefore, that there should be a want 
of sympathy in regard to these pursuits among 
men, the politician despising the scholar, and 
the scholar looking down upon the politician, 
and the man of affairs, the man of industries, 
not caring to conceal his contempt for both 
the others. And still more reasonable does 
the division appear between all the world 
which is devoted to material life, and the few 
who live in and for the expression of thought 
and emotion. It is a pity that this should be 
so, for it can be shown that life would not be 
worth living divorced from the gracious and 
ennobling influence of literature, and that 



26 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

literature suffers atrophy when it does not 
concern itself with the facts and feelings of 
men. 

If the poet lives in a world apart from the 
vulgar, the most lenient apprehension of him 
is that his is a sort of fool's paradise. One 
of the most curious features in the relation of 
literature to life is this, that while poetry, the 
production of the poet, is as necessary to uni- 
versal man as the atmosphere, and as accept- 
able, the poet is regarded with that mingling 
of compassion and undervaluation, and per- 
haps awe, which once attached to the weak- 
minded and insane, and which is sometimes ex- 
pressed by the term " inspired idiot." How- 
ever the poet may have been petted and 
crowned, however his name may have been 
diffused among peoples, I doubt not that the 
popular estimate of him has always been sub- 
stantially what it is to-day. And we all know 
that it is true, true in our individual conscious- 
ness, that if a man be known as a poet and 
nothing else, if his character is sustained by 
no other achievement than the production of 
poetry, he suffers in our opinion a loss of re- 
spect. And this is only recovered for him 
after he is dead, and his poetry is left alone to 
speak for his name. However fond my lord 



RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 27 

and lady were of the ballad, the place of the 
minstrel was at the lower end of the hall. If 
we are pushed to say why this is, why this 
happens to the poet and not to the producers 
of anything else that excites the admiration of 
mankind, we are forced to admit that there is 
something in the poet to sustain the popular 
judgment of his inutility. In all the occupa- 
tions and professions of life there is a sign put 
up, invisible but none the less real, and ex- 
pressing an almost universal feeling — "I^o poet 
need apply." And this is not because there 
are so many poor poets; for there are poor 
lawyers, poor soldiers, poor statesmen, incom- 
petent business men; but none of the personal 
disparagement attaches to them that is affixed 
to the poet. This popular estimate of the poet 
extends also, possibly in less degree, to all the 
producers of the literature that does not con- 
cern itself with knowledge. It is not our care 
to inquire further why this is so, but to repeat 
that it is strange that it should be so when 
poetry is, and has been at all times, the uni- 
versal solace of all peoples who have emerged 
out of barbarism, the one thing not super- 
natural and yet akin to the supernatural, that 
makes the world, in its hard and sordid condi- 
tions, tolerable to the race. For poetry is not 



28 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

merely the comfort of the refined and the de- 
light of the educated; it is the alleviator of 
poverty, the pleasure-ground of the ignorant, 
the bright spot in the most dreary pilgrimage. 
We cannot conceive the abject animal condi- 
tion of our race were poetry abstracted; and 
we do not wonder that this should be so 
when we reflect that it supplies a want higher 
than the need for food, for raiment, or ease of 
living, and that the mind needs support as 
much as the body. The majority of mankind 
live largely in the imagination, the office or 
use of which is to lift them in spirit out of the 
bare physical conditions in which the majority 
exist. There are races, which we may call the 
poetical races, in which this is strikingly ex- 
emplified. It would be difficult to find pov- 
erty more complete, physical wants less grati- 
fied, the conditions of life more bare than 
among the Oriental peoples from the Nile to 
the Ganges and from the Indian Ocean to the 
steppes of Siberia. But there are perhaps 
none among the more favored races who live 
so much in the world of imagination fed by 
poetry and romance. "Watch the throng seat- 
ed about an Arab or Indian or Persian story- 
teller and poet, men and women with all the 
marks of want, hungry, almost naked, with- 



RELATION OF LITEEATUKE TO LIFE 29 

out any prospect in life of ever bettering their 
sordid condition ; see their eyes kindle, their 
breathing suspended, their tense absorption ; 
see their tears, hear their laughter, note their 
excitement as the magician unfolds to them a 
realm of the imagination in which the}^ are 
free for the hour to wander, tasting a keen 
and deep enjoyment that all the wealth of 
Croesus cannot purchase for his disciples. 
Measure, if you can, what poetry is to them, 
what their lives would be without it. To the 
millions and millions of men who are in this 
condition, the bard, the story-teller, the cre- 
ator of what we are considering as literature, 
comes with the one thing that can lift them 
out of poverty, suffering — all the woe of which 
nature is so heedless. 

It is not alone of the poetical nations of 
the East that this is true, nor is this desire 
for the higher enjoyment always wanting in 
the savage tribes of the West. When the 
Jesuit Fathers in 1768 landed upon the almost 
untouched and unexplored southern Pacific 
coast, they found in the San Gabriel Yalley 
in Lower California that the Indians had 
games and feasts at which they decked them- 
selves in flower garlands that reached to their 
feet, and that at these games there were song 



30 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

contests which sometimes lasted for three 
days. This contest of the poets was an old 
custom with them. And we remember how 
the ignorant Icelanders, who had never seen a 
written character, created the splendid Saga, 
and handed it down from father to son. We 
shall scarcely find in Europe a peasantry whose 
abject poverty is not in some measure alle- 
viated by this power which literature gives 
them to live outside it. Through our sacred 
Scriptures, through the ancient story-tellers, 
throuf]:h the tradition which in literature made, 
as I said, the chief continuity in the stream of 
time, we all live a considerable, perhaps the 
better, portion of our lives in the Orient. But 
I am not sure that the Scotch peasant, the 
crofter in his Highland cabin, the operative 
in his squalid tenement-house, in the hopeless- 
ness of poverty, in the grime of a life made 
twice as hard as that of the Arab by an inim- 
ical climate, does not owe more to literature 
than the man of culture, whose material sur- 
roundings are heaven in the imagination of 
the poor. Think what his wretched life would 
be, in its naked deformity, without the popu- 
lar ballads, without the romances of Scott, 
which have invested his land for him, as for 
us, with enduring charm ; and especially with- 



EELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 31 

out the songs of Burns, which keep alive in 
him the feehng that he is a man, which im- 
part to his blunted sensibility the delicious 
throb of spring — songs that enable him to 
hear the birds, to see the bits of blue sky — 
songs that make him tender of the wee bit 
daisy at his feet — songs that hearten him when 
his heart is fit to break with misery. Perhaps 
the English peasant, the English operative, is 
less susceptible to such influences than the 
Scotch or the Irish ; but over him, sordid as 
his conditions are, close kin as he is to the 
clod, the light of poetry is diffused ; there fil- 
ters into his life, also, something of that divine 
stream of which we have spoken, a dialect 
poem that touches him, the leaf of a psalm, 
some bit of imagination, some tale of pathos, 
set afloat by a poor writer so long ago that it 
has become the common stock of human tra- 
dition — maybe from Palestine, maybe from 
the Ganges, perhaps from Athens — some ex- 
pression of real emotion, some creation, we 
say, that makes for him a world, vague and 
dimly apprehended, that is not at all the act- 
ual world in which he sins and suffers. The 
poor woman, in a hut with an earth floor, a 
reeking roof, a smoky chimney, barren of com- 
fort, so indecent that a gentleman would not 



S3 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

stable his horso in it, sits and sews upon a 
coarse garment, Avhile she rocks the cradle of 
an infant about whom she cherishes no illu- 
sions that his lot w^ill be other than that of 
his father before him. As she sits forlorn, it 
is not the wretched hovel that she sees, nor 
other hovels like it — rows of tenements of 
hopeless poverty, the ale-house, the gin-shop, 
the coal-pit, and the choking factory — but 

** Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Stand dressed in living green" 

for her, thanks to the poet. But, alas for the 
poet ! there is not a peasant nor a wretched 
operative of them all who will not shake his 
head and tap his forehead with his forefinger 
-when the poor poet chap passes by. The 
peasant has the same opinion of him that the 
physician, the trainer, and the money-lender 
had of the rhetorician. 

The hard conditions of the lonely Xew Eng- 
land life, with its religious theories as sombre 
as its forests, its rigid notions of duty as difii- 
cult to make bloom into sweetness and beauty 
as the stony soil, would have been unendura- 
ble if they had not been touched with the ideal 
created by the poet. There was in creed and 
purpose the virility that creates a state, and. 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 33 

as Menander says, the country which is cul- 
tivated with difficulty produces brave men ; 
but we leave out an important element in the 
lives of the Pilgrims if we overlook the means 
they had of living above their barren circum- 
stances. I do not speak only of the culture 
which many of them brought from the univer- 
sities, of the Greek and Koman classics, and 
what unworldly literature they could glean 
from the productive age of Elizabeth and 
James, but of another source, more univer- 
sally resorted to, and more powerful in ex- 
citing imagination and emotion, and filling 
the want in human nature of which we have 
spoken. They had the Bible, and it was more 
to them, much more, than a book of religion, 
than a revelation of religious truth, a rule for 
the conduct of life, or a guide to heaven. It 
supplied the place to them of the Mahabharata 
to the Hindoo, of the story-teller to the Arab. 
It opened to them a boundless realm of poetry 
and imagination. 

"What is the Bible ? It might have sufficed, 
accepted as a book of revelation, for all the 
purposes of moral guidance, spiritual consola- 
tion, and systematized authority, if it had been 
a collection of precepts, a dry code of morals, 
an arsenal of judgments, and a treasury of 



34 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

promises. We are accustomed to think of the 
Pilgrims as training their intellectual facul- 
ties in the knottiest problems of human re- 
sponsibility and destiny, toughening their 
mental fibre in wrestling with dogmas and 
the decrees of Providence, forgetting what 
else they drew out of the Bible : what else it 
was to them in a degree it has been to few 
peoples in any age. Por the Bible is the un- 
equalled record of thought and emotion, the 
reservoir of poetry, traditions, stories, para- 
bles, exaltations, consolations, great imagina- 
tive adventure, for which the spirit of man is 
always longing. It might have been, in warn- 
ing examples and commands, all-sufficient to 
enable men to make a decent pilgrimage on 
earth and reach a better country ; but it would 
have been a very different book to mankind 
if it had been only a volume of statutes, and 
if it lacked its wonderful literary quality. It 
miffht have enabled men to reach a better 
country, but not, while on earth, to rise into 
and live in that better country, or to live in a 
region above the sordidness of actual life. 
For, apart from its religious intention and sa- 
cred character, the book is so written that it 
has supremely in its history, poetry, prophe- 
cies, promises, stories, that clear literary qual- 



RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 35 

ity that supplies, as certainly no other single 
book does, the want in the human mind which 
is higher than the want of facts or knowledge. 
The Bible is the best illustration of the lit- 
erature of power, for it always concerns itself 
with life, it touches it at all points. And this is 
the test of any piece of literature — its universal 
appeal to human nature. When I consider the 
narrow limitations of the Pilgrim households, 
the absence of luxury, the presence of danger 
and hardship, the harsh laws — only less severe 
than the contemporary laws of England and 
Virginia — the weary drudgery, the few pleas- 
ures, the curb upon the expression of emotion 
and of tenderness, the ascetic repression of 
worldly thought, the absence of poetry in the 
routine occupations and conditions, I can feel 
what the Bible must have been to them. It was 
an open door into a world where emotion is ex- 
pressed, where imagination can range, where 
love and longing find a language, where im- 
agery is given to every noble and suppressed 
passion of the soul, where every aspiration 
finds wings. It was history, or, as Thucyd- 
ides said, philosophy teaching by example ; it 
was the romance of real life ; it was entertain- 
ment unfailing ; the wonder-book of childhood, 
the volume of sweet sentiment to the shy 



36 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

maiden, the sword to the soldier, the inciter 
of the youth to heroic enduring of hardness, 
it was the refuge of the aged in failing activity. 
Perhaps we can nowhere find a better illus- 
tration of the true relation of literature to life 
than in this example. 

Let us consider the comparative value of lit- 
erature to mankind. By comparative value I 
mean its worth to men in comparison with 
other things of acknowledged importance, such 
as the creation of industries, the government 
of states, the manipulation of the politics of 
an age, the achievements in war and discovery, 
and the lives of admirable men. It needs a 
certain perspective to judge of this aright, for 
the near and the immediate always assume im- 
portance. The work that an age has on hand, 
whether it be discovery, conquest, the wars 
that determine boundaries or are fought for 
policies, the industries that develop a country 
or affect the character of a people, the wield- 
ing of power, the accumulation of fortunes, the 
various activities of any given civihzation or 
period, assume such enormous proportions to 
those engaged in them that such a modest 
thing as the literary product seems insignifi- 
cant in comparison ; and hence it is that the 
man of action always holds in slight esteem 



RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 37 

the man of thought, and especially the ex- 
presser of feeling and emotion, the poet and 
the humorist. It is only when we look back 
over the ages, when civilizations have passed 
or changed, over the rivalries of states, the 
ambitions and enmities of men, the shining 
deeds and the base deeds that make up history, 
that we are enabled to see what remains, what 
is permanent. Perhaps the chief result left to 
the world out of a period of heroic exertion, of 
passion and struggle and accumulation, is a 
sheaf of poems, or the record by a man of let- 
ters of some admirable character. Spain filled 
a large place in the world in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and its influence upon history is by no 
means spent yet ; but we have inherited out of 
that period nothing, I dare say, that is of more 
value than the romance of Don Quixote. It is 
true that the best heritage of generation from 
generation is the character of great men ; but 
we always owe its transmission to the poet and 
the writer. Without Plato there would be no 
Socrates. There is no influence comparable in 
human life to the personality of a powerful 
man, so long as he is present to his generation, 
or lives in the memory of those who felt his 
influence. But after time has passed, will the 
world, will human life, that is essentiallv the 



38 RELATION OF LITEEATURE TO LIFE 

same in all changing conditions, be more af- 
fected by what Bismarck did or by what Goethe 
said ? 

We may without impropriety take for an 
illustration of the comparative value of liter- 
ature to human needs the career of a man now 
living. In the opinion of many, Mr. Glad- 
stone is the greatest Englishman of this age. 
What would be the position of the British em- 
pire, what would be the tendency of English 
politics and society without him, is a matter 
for speculation. He has not played such a 
role for England and its neighbors as Bismarck 
has played for Germany and the Continent, but 
he has been one of the most powerful influ- 
ences in moulding English action. He is the 
foremost teacher. Earely in history has a 
nation depended more upon a single man, at 
times, than the English upon Gladstone, upon 
his will, his ability, and especially his char- 
acter. In certain recent crises the thought of 
losing him produced something hke a panic in 
the English mind, justifying in regard to him 
the hyperbole of Choate upon the death of 
Webster, that the sailor on the distant sea 
would feel less safe — as if a protecting provi- 
dence had been withdrawn from the world. 
His mastery of finance and of economic prob- 



RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 39 

leras, his skill in debate, his marvellous achieve- 
ments in oratory, have extorted the admiration 
of his enemies. There is scarcely a province 
in government, letters, art, or research in which 
the mind can v^in triumphs that he has not 
invaded and displayed his power in ; scarcely 
a question in politics, reform, letters, religion, 
archaeology, sociology, which he has not dis- 
cussed with ability. He is a scholar, critic, 
parliamentarian, orator, voluminous writer. 
He seems equally at home in every field of 
human activity — a man of prodigious capacity 
and enormous acquirements. He can take up, 
with a turn of the hand, and always with vigor, 
the cause of the Greeks, Papal power, educa- 
tion, theology, the influence of Egypt on 
Homer, the effect of English legislation on 
King O'Brien, contributing something note- 
worthy to all the discussions of the day. But 
I am not aware that he has ever produced a 
single page of literature. Whatever space he 
has filled in his own country, whatever and 
however enduring the impression he has made 
upon English life and society, does it seem 
likely that the sum total of his immense activ- 
ity in so many fields, after the passage of so 
many years, will be worth to the world as much 
as the simple story of Rah and his Friends 9 



40 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

Already in America I doubt if it is. The il- 
lustration might have more weight with some 
minds if I contrasted the work of this great 
man — as to its answering to a deep want in hu- 
man nature — with a novel like Henry Esmond 
or a poem like In Memoviam / but I think it is 
sufficient to rest it upon so sMght a perform- 
ance as the sketch by Dr. John Brown, of Ed- 
inburgh.\. For the truth is that a little page of 
literatur0,'mothing more than a sheet of paper 
with a poem written on it, may have that vi- 
tality, that enduring quality, that adaptation 
to life, that make it of more consequence to all 
who inherit it than every material achievement 
of the age that produced it. /It was nothing 
but a sheet of paper with a poem on it, carried 
to the door of his London patron, for which 
the poet received a guinea, and perhaps a seat 
at the foot of my lord's table. What was 
that scrap compared to my lord's business, his 
great establishment, his equipages in the Park, 
his position in society, his weight in the House 
of Lords, his influence in Europe % And yet 
that scrap of paper has gone the world over ; 
it has been sung in the camp, wept over in the 
lonely cottage ; it has gone with the marching 
regiments, with the explorers — with mankind, 
in short, on its way down the ages, brighten- 



RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 41 

ing, consoling, elevating life ; and my lord, 
who regarded as scarcely above a menial the 
poet to whom he tossed the guinea — my lord, 
with all his jDageantry and power, has utterly 
gone and left no witness. 

(1886.) " 



SIMPLICITY 



SIMPLICITY 

'No doubt one of the most charming crea- 
tions in all poetry is Nausicaa, the white-armed 
daughter of King Alcinous. There is no scene, 
no picture, in the heroic times more pleasing 
than the meeting of Ulysses with this dam- 
sel on the wild sea -shore of Scheria, where 
the Wanderer had been tossed ashore by the 
tempest. The place of this classic meeting 
was probably on the west coast of Corfu, that 
incomparable island, to whose beauty the 
legend of the exquisite maidenhood of the 
daughter of the king of the Phseacians has 
added an immortal bloom. 

We have no difficulty in recalling it in all 
its distinctness : the bright morning on which 
Nausicaii came forth from the palace, where 
her mother sat and turned the distaff loaded 
with a fleece dyed in sea-purple, mounted the 
car piled with the robes to be cleansed in the 
stream, and, attended by her bright -haired, 
laughing handmaidens, drove to the banks of 



46 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

the river, where out of its sweet grasses it 
flowed over clean sand into the Adriatic. The 
team is loosed to browse the grass ; the gar- 
ments are flung into the dark water, then 
trampled with hasty feet in frolic rivalry, and 
spread upon the gravel to dry. Then the 
maidens bathe, give their limbs the delicate 
oil from the cruse of gold, sit by the stream 
and eat their meal, and, refreshed, mistress 
and maidens lay aside their veils and play at 
ball, and I^ausicaii begins a soug. Though all 
were fair, like Diana was this spotless virgin 
midst her maids. A missed ball and maidenly 
screams waken Ulysses from his sleep in the 
thicket. At the apparition of the unclad, 
shipwrecked sailor the maidens flee right and 
left, l^ausicaii alone keeps her place, secure 
in her unconscious modesty. To the aston- 
ished Sport of Fortune the vision of this ra- 
diant girl, in shape and stature and in noble 
air, is more than mortal, yet scarcely more 
than woman : 

"Like thee, I saw of late, 
In Delos, a young palm-tree growing up 
Beside Apollo's altar." 

"When the "Wanderer has bathed, and been 
clad ill robes from the pile on the sand, and 



SIMPLICITY 47 

refreshed with food and wine which the hos- 
pitable maidens put before him, the train sets 
out for the town, Ulysses following the chariot 
among the bright-haired women. But before 
that Nausicaii, in the candor of those early 
days, says to her attendants : 

" I would that I might call 
A man like him my husband, dwelling here, 
And here content to dwell." 

Is there any woman in history more to be 
desired than this sweet, pure-minded, honest- 
hearted girl, as she is depicted with a few 
swift touches by the great poet? — the du- 
tiful daughter in her father's house, the joy- 
ous companion of girls, the beautiful woman 
whose modest bearing commands the instant 
homage of man. Nothing is more endurino- 
in literature than this girl and the scene on 
the Corfu sands. 

The sketch, though distinct, is slight, little 
more than outlines; no elaboration, no analy- 
sis ; just an incident, as real as the blue sky 
of Scheria and the waves on the yellow sand. 
AH the elements of the picture are simple, 
human, natural, standing in as unconfused 
relations as any events in common life. I am 
not recalling it because it is a conspicuous in- 



48 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

stance of the true realism that is touched with 
the idealit}^ of genius, which is the immortal 
element in literature, but as an illustration of 
the other necessary quality in all productions 
of the human mind that remain age after age, 
and that is simplicity. This is the stamp of 
all enduring work ; this is what appeals to 
the universal understanding from generation 
to generation. All the masterpieces that en- 
dure and become a part of our lives are char- 
acterized by it. The eye, like the mind, hates 
confusion and overcrowding. All the ele- 
ments in beautj^, grandeur, pathos, are sim- 
ple — as simple as the lines in a Nile picture : 
the strong river, the yellow desert, the palms, 
the pyramids ; hardly more than a horizontal 
line and a perpendicular line; only there is 
the sky, the atmosphere, the color — those need 
genius. 

We may test contemporary literature by its 
conformity to the canon of simplicity — that 
is, if it has not that, we may conclude that it 
lacks one essential lasting quality. It may 
please ; it may be ingenious — brilliant, even ; 
it may be the fashion of the day, and a fash- 
ion that will hold its power of pleasing for 
half a century, but it will be a fashion. JMan- 
nerisms of course will not deceive us, nor ex- 



SIMPLICITY 49 

travagances, eccentricities, affectations, nor the 
straining after effect by the use of coined or 
far-fetched words and prodigality in adjec- 
tives. But, style ? Yes, there is such a thing 
as style, good and bad ; and the style should 
be the writer's own and characteristic of him, 
as his speech is. But the moment I admire a 
style for its own sake, a style that attracts my 
attention so constantly that I say, How good 
that is ! I begin to be suspicious. If it is too 
good, too pronouncedly good, I fear I shall 
not like it so well on a second reading. If it 
comes to stand between me and the thought, 
or the personality behind the thought, I grow 
more and more suspicious. Is the book a win- 
dow, through which I am to see life ? Then 
I cannot have the glass too clear. Is it to af- 
fect me like a strain of music? Then I am 
still more disturbed by any affectations. Is it 
to produce the effect of a picture? Then I 
know I want the simplest harmony of color. 
And I have learned that the most effective 
word - painting, as it is called, is the simplest. 
This is true if it is a question only of present 
enjoyment. But we may be sure that any 
piece of literature which attracts only by 
some trick of style, however it may blaze up 
for a day and startle the world with its flash, 



50 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

lacks the element of endurance. We do not 
need much experience to tell us the difference 
between a lamp and a Koman candle. Even 
in our day we have seen many reputations 
flare up, illuminate the sky, and then go out 
in utter darkness. "When we take a proper 
historical perspective, we see that it is the 
universal, the simple, that lasts. 

I am not sure whether simplicity is a matter 
of nature or of cultivation. Barbarous nature 
likes display, excessive ornament ; and when 
we have arrived at the nobly simple, the per- 
fect proportion, we are always likely to re- 
lapse into the confused and the complicated. 
The most cultivated men, we know, are the 
simplest in manners, in taste, in their style. 
It is a note of some of the purest modern 
writers that they avoid comparisons, similes, 
and even too much use of metaphor. But 
the mass of men are always relapsing into 
the tawdry and the over - ornamented. It 
is a characteristic of youth, and it seems 
also to be a characteristic of over - develop- 
ment. Literature, in any language, has no 
sooner arrived at the highest vigor of simple 
expression than it begins to run into pretti- 
ness, conceits, over - elaboration. This is a 
fact which may be verified by studying differ- 



SIMPLICITY 51 

ent periods, from classic literature to our own 
clay. 

It is the same with architecture. The clas- 
sic Greek runs into the excessive elabora- 
tion of the Koman period, the Gothic into the 
flamboyant, and so on. We have had several 
attacks of architectural measles in this coun- 
try, which have left the land spotted all over 
with houses in bad taste. Instead of develop- 
ing the colonial simplicity on lines of dignity 
and harmony to modern use, we stuck on the 
pseudo-classic, we broke out in the Mansard, 
we broke all up into the whimsicalities of the 
so-called Queen Anne, without regard to cli- 
mate or comfort. The eye speedily tires of 
all these things. It is a positive relief to look 
at an old colonial mansion, even if it is as plain 
as a barn. What the eye demands is simple 
lines, proportion, harmony in mass, dignity; 
above all, adaptation to use. And what we 
must have also is individuality in house and 
in furniture; that makes the city, the vil- 
lage, picturesque and interesting. The highest 
thing in architecture, as in literature, is the 
development of individuality in simplicity. 

Dress is a dangerous topic to meddle with. 
I myself like the attire of the maidens of 
Scheria, thouf]:h ISTausicaii, we must note, was 



52 KELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

" clad royally." But climate cannot be disre- 
garded, and the vestment that was so fitting 
on a Greek girl whom I saw at the Second 
Cataract of the Nile would scarcely be appro- 
priate in ]^ew York. If the maidens of one 
of our colleges for girls, say Yassar for illus- 
tration, habited like the Phaeacian girls of 
Scheria, went down to the Hudson to cleanse 
the rich robes of the house, and were sur- 
prised by the advent of a stranger from the 
city, landing from a steamboat — a wandering 
broker, let us say, clad in wide trousers, long 
top-coat, and a tall hat — I fancy that he 
would be more astonished than Ulysses was 
at the bevy of girls that scattered at his ap- 
proach. It is not that women must be all 
things to all men, but that their simplicity must 
conform to time and circumstance. What I 
do not understand is that simplicity gets ban- 
ished altogether, and that fashion, on a dicta- 
tion that no one can trace the origin of, makes 
that lovely in the eyes of women to-day which 
will seem utterly abhorrent to them to-mor- 
row. There appears to be no line of taste 
running through the changes. The only con- 
solation to you, the woman of the moment, 
is that while the costume your grandmother 
wore makes her, in the painting, a guy in your 



SrMPLICITT 53 

eyes, the costume you wear will give your 
grandchildren the same impression of you. 
And the satisfaction for you is the thought 
that the latter raiment will be worse than the 
other two— that is to say, less well suited to 
display the shape, station, and noble air which 
brought Ulysses to his knees on the sands of 
Corfu. 

Another reason why I say that I do not 
know whether simplicity belongs to nature or 
art is that fashion is as strong to pervert and 
disfigure in savage nations as it is in civilized. 
It runs to as much eccentricity in hair-dressino- 
and ornament in the costume of the jinglin^ 
belles of ISTootka and the maidens of ISTubia as in 
any court or coterie which we aspire to unitate. 
The only difference is that remote and unso- 
phisticated communities are more constant to 
a style they once adopt. There are isolated 
peasant communities in Europe who have kept 
for centuries the most uncouth and inconven- 
ient attire, while we have run through a dozen 
variations in the art of attraction by dress, 
from the most puffed and bulbous ballooning 
to the extreme of limpness and lankness. I 
can only conclude that the civilized human 
being is a restless creature, whose motives in 
regard to costume are utterly unfathomable. 



51 RELATION OF LITEIiATUEE TO LIFE 

'We need, however, to go a little further in 
this question of simplicit}^ ISTausicaii was 
" clad ro^^ally." There was a distinction, then, 
between her and her handmaidens. She was 
clad simply, according to her condition. Taste 
does not by any means lead to uniformity. I 
have read of a commune in which all the 
women dressed alike and unbecomingh", so as 
to discourage all attempt to please or attract, 
or to give value to the different accents of 
beauty. The end of those women was worse 
than the beginning. Simplicity is not ugli- 
ness, nor poverty, nor barrenness, nor necessa- 
rily plainness. What is simplicity for another 
may not be for j^ou, for your condition, your 
tastes, especially for your wants. It is a per- 
sonal question. You go beyond simplicity 
when you attempt to appropriate more than 
your wants, your aspirations, whatever they 
are, demand — that is, to appropriate for show, 
for ostentation, more than your life can assim- 
ilate, can make thoroughly yours. There is 
no limit to what you may have, if it is neces- 
sary for you, if it is not a superfluity to you. 
What would be simplicity to 3'ou may be 
superfluity to another. The rich robes that 
^ausicaa wore she wore like a goddess. The 
moment 3"our dress, your house, your house- 



SIMPLICITY 55 

grounds, your furniture, your scale of living, 
are beyond the rational satisfaction of your 
own desires — that is, are for ostentation, for 
imposition upon the public — they are super- 
fluous, the line of simplicity is passed. Every 
human being has a right to whatever can best 
feed his life, satisfy his legitimate desires, 
contribute to the growth of his soul. It is not 
for me to judge whether this is luxury or 
want. There is no merit in riches nor in 
poverty. There is merit in that simplicity of 
life which seeks to grasp no more than is nec- 
essary for the development and enjoyment of 
the individual. Most of us, in all conditions, 
are weighted down with superfluities or wor- 
ried to acquire them. Simplicity is making 
the journey of this life with just baggage 
enough. 

The needs of every person differ from the 
needs of every other ; we can make no stand- 
ard for wants or possessions. But the world 
would be greatly transformed and much more 
easy to live in if everybody limited his acqui- 
sitions to his ability to assimilate them to his 
life. The destruction of simplicity is a crav- 
ing for things, not because we need them, but 
because others have them. Because one man 
who lives in a plain little house, in all the 



56 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

restrictions of mean surroundings, would be 
happier in a mansion suited to his taste and 
his wants, is no argument that another man, 
living in a palace, in useless ostentation, Avould 
not be better off in a dwelling which conforms 
to his cultivation and habits. It is so hard to 
learn the lesson that there is no satisfaction in 
gaining more than we personally want. 

The matter of simplicity, then, comes into 
literary style, into building, into dress, into life, 
individualized always by one's personality. In 
each we aim at the expression of the best that 
is in us, not at imitation or ostentation. 

The women in history, in legend, in poetry, 
whom we love, we do not love because they 
are "clad royally." In our day, to be clad 
royally is scarcely a distinction. To have a 
superfluity is not a distinction. But in those 
moments when we have a clear vision of life, 
that which seems to us most admirable and 
desirable is the simplicity that endears to us 
the idyl of Kausicaa, 

(1889.) 



EQUALITY^' 



"EQUALITY 

In accordance with the advice of Diogenes 
of Apollonia in the beginning of his treatise on 
Natural Philosophy — " It appears to me to be 
well for every one who commences any sort of 
philosophical treatise to lay down some un- 
deniable principle to start wdth" — we offer this: 

All men are created unequal. 

It would be a most interesting study to trace 
the growth in the world of the doctrine of 
" equahty." That is not the purpose of this 
essay, any further than is necessary for defini- 
tion. "We use the term in its popular sense, in 
the meaning, somewhat vague, it is true, which 
it has had since the middle of the eighteenth 
century. In the popular apprehension it is apt 
to be confounded with uniformity; and this 
not without reason, since in many applications 
of the theory the tendency is to produce like- 
ness or uniformity. Nature, with equal laws, 
tends always to diversity ; and doubtless the 
just notion of equality in human affairs consists 



60 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

with unlikeness. Our purpose is to note some 
of the tendencies of the dogma as it is at pres- 
ent understood by a considerable portion of 
mankind. 

"We regard the formulated doctrine as mod- 
ern. It would be too much to say that some 
notion of the " equality of men " did not un- 
derlie the socialistic and communistic ideas 
which prevailed from time to time in the an- 
cient world, and broke out with volcanic vio- 
lence in the Grecian and Koman communities. 
But those popular movements seem to us rath- 
er blind struggles against physical evils, and 
to be distinguished from those more intelli- 
gent actions based upon the theory which be- 
gan to stir Europe prior to the Reformation. 

It is sufficient for our purpose to take the 
well-defined theory of modern times. Whether 
the ideal republic of Plato was merely a con- 
venient form for philosophical speculation, or 
whether, as the greatest authority on political 
economy in Germany, Dr. William Roscher, 
thinks, it " was no mere fancy ;" Avhether 
Plato's notion of the identity of man and the 
state is compatible with the theor}^ of equality, 
or whether it is, as many communists say, in- 
dispensable to it, we need not here discuss. It 
is true that in his Eepxcblie almost all the 



« T^rwTT A T Trirtr " 



EQUALITY " 61 

social theories which have been deduced from 
the modern proclamation of equality are elabo- 
rated. There was to be a community of prop- 
erty, and also a community of wives and 
children. The equality of the sexes was in- 
sisted on to the extent of living in common, 
identical education and pursuits, equal share in 
all labors, in occupations, and in government. 
Between the sexes there was allowed only one 
ultimate difference. The Greeks, as Professor 
Jowett says, had noble conceptions of woman- 
hood ; but Plato's ideal for the sexes had no 
counterpart in their actual life, nor could they 
have understood the sort of equality upon 
which he insisted. The same is true of the 
Komans throughout their history. 

More than any other Oriental peoples the 
Egyptians of the Ancient Empire entertained 
the idea of the equality of the sexes ; but the 
equality of man was not conceived by them. 
Still less did any notion of it exist in the Jew- 
ish state. It was the fashion with the socialists 
of 1793, as it has been with the international 
assemblages at Geneva in our own day, to trace 
the genesis of their notions back to the first 
Christian age. The far-reaching influence of 
the new gospel in the liberation of the hu- 
man mind and in promoting just and divinely 



63 RELATION OF LITEI5ATUKE TO LIFE 

ordered relations among men is admitted ; its 
origination of the social and political dogma 
Ave arc considering is denied. AVe do not iind 
that Christ himself anywhere expressed it or 
acted on it. lie associated with the lowly, the 
vile, the outcast ; ho taught that iill men, ir- 
respective of rank or possessions, are sinners, 
and in equal need of help. l>ut he attempted 
no change in the conditions of society. The 
''communism" of the early Christians was the 
temporary relation of a persecuted and isolated 
sect, drawn together by common necessities 
and dangers, and by the new enthusiasm of 
self-surrender/^' Paul announced the universal 
brotherhood of man, but lie as clearly recog- 
nized the suboixiination of society, in the duties 
of ruler and subject, master and slave, and in 
all the domestic relations; and although his 
gospel may bo interpreted to contain the ele- 

* "The community of goods of the lirst Christians at 
Jerusalem, so frequently cited ;xnd extolled, was only a 
community of use, not of ownership (Acts iv. 8'2), and 
throughout a voluntary act of love, not a duty (v. 4); least 
of all. a right which the poorer might assert. Spite of all 
this, that connnunity of goods produced a chix>nie state of 
poverty in tlio church of Jerusalem." {lVinci})ies of 
I\>Ii'tical F<\immi^. By William Koscher. Note to Section 
LXXXI. English translation. New York : Henry Holt 
vt Co. 1S7S.) 



" EQUALITY " C3 

monts of revolution, it is not probable that ho 
undertook to inculcate, by the proclamation of 
^'universal brotherhood,'' any tiling more than 
the duty of universal sympathy between all 
peoples and classes as society then existed. 

If Christianity has been and is the force in 
promoting and shaping civilization that we 
regard it, we may be sure that it is not as a 
political agent, or an annuller of the inequali- 
ties of life, that we are to expect aid from it. 
Its olfice, or rather one of its chief offices on 
earth, is to diffuse through the world, regard- 
less of condition or possessions or talent or 
opportunity, sympathy and a recognition of 
the value of manhood underlying every lot 
and every diversity — a value not measured by 
earthly accidents, but by heavenly standards. 
This we understand to be "Christian equal- 
ity." Of course it consists with inequalities 
of condition, Avith subordination, discipline, 
obedience ; to obey and servo is as honorable 
as to command and to be served. 

If the religion of Christ should ever be ac- 
climated on earth, the result would not be the 
removal of hardships and sulXering, or of the 
necessity of self-sacrifice; but the bitterness 
and discontent at unequal conditions would 
measurably disappear. At the bar of Chris- 



64 RELATION OF LITERATIJRE TO LIFE 

tianity the poor man is the equal of the rich, 
and the learned of the unlearned, since intel- 
lectual acquisition is no guarantee of moral 
worth. The content that Christianity would 
bring to our perturbed society'- would come 
from the practical recognition of the truth 
that all conditions may be equally honorable. 
The assertion of the dignity of man and of 
labor is, we imagine, the sum and substance of 
the equalit}'- and communism of the ISTew Tes- 
tament. But we are to remember that this is 
not merely a " gospel for the poor." 

Whatever the theories of the ancient world 
were, the development of democratic ideas is 
sufficiently marked in the fifteenth century, 
and even in the fourteenth, to rob the eigh- 
teenth of the credit of originating the doctrine 
of equality. To mention only one of the ear- 
ly writers,'^^ Marsilio, a ph^^sician of Padua, in 
1324, said that the laws ought to be made by 



* For copious references to authorities on the spread of 
communistic and socialistic ideas and libertine community 
of goods and women in four periods of the world's his- 
tor}' — namely, at the time of the decline of Greece, in the 
degeneration of the Roman republic, among the moderns 
in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own 
(Jay— see Roscher's Political Economy, notes to Section 
LXXIX., et seq. 



** EQUALITY " 65 

all the citizens ; and he based this sovereignty 
of the people upon the greater likelihood of 
laws being better obeyed, and also being good 
laws, when they were made by the whole body 
of the persons affected. 

In 1Y50 and 1753, J. J. Eousseau published 
his two discourses on questions proposed by 
the Academy of Dijon : " Has the Eestoration 
of Sciences Contributed to Purify or to Cor- 
rupt Manners?" and "What is the Origin of 
Inequality among Men, and is it Authorized 
by Natural Law?" These questions show the 
direction and the advance of thinking on so- 
cial topics in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Eousseau's Contrat-Social and the novel 
Emile were published in 1761. 

But almost three-quarters of a century be- 
fore, in 1690, John Locke published his two 
treatises on government. Rousseau was fa- 
miliar with them. Mr. John Morley, in his 
admirable study of Rousseau,^ fully discusses 
the latter's obligation to Locke ; and the expo- 
sition leaves Rousseau little credit for original- 
ity, but considerable for illogical misconcep- 
tion. He was, in fact, the most illogical of 

* Rousseau. By John Morley. London : Chapman & 
Hall, 1873. I have used it freely in the glance at this 
period. 
6 



0>6 KKLATION OF IJTEEA.TUKE IX^ LIFE 

groat men, and tlio most inconsistent even of 
irouiusos. The i7ontrat-Social is a reaction in 
many things from the disconrses, and EmUe 
is ahnost an entire reaction, especially in the 
theory of education, from both. 

His central doctrine of popular sovereignty 
was taken from Locke. The English philoso- 
pher said, in his second treatise, '* To under- 
stand political power aright and derive it from 
its oriirinal, we must consider what state all 
men are naturally in ; and that is a state of 
perfect freedom to oi\ler their actions and dis- 
pose of their persons and possessions as they 
think fit, within the bounds of the law of nat- 
ure, without asking leave or depending upon 
the will of any other man — a state also of 
equality, wherein all the power and jurisdic- 
tion is reciprocal, no one having moi'o than 
another; there being nothing more evident 
than that creatures of the same species and 
rank, promiscuously born to all the advantages 
of natui\^ and the use of the same faculties, 
shouki also be equal one amongst another, with- 
out subordination or subjection, unless the Lord 
and Master of them all should by any manifest 
declaration of His will set one above another, 
and confer on him by an evident and clear ap- 
pointment an undoubted right to dominion and 



" EQUALITY " 07 

sovereignty." But a state of liberty is not a 
state of license. We cannot exceed our own 
rights without assailing the rights of others. 
There is no such subordination as authorizes 
us to destroy one another. As every one is 
bound to preserve himself, so he is bound to 
preserve the rest of mankind, and except to do 
justice upon an offender we may not impair 
the life, liberty, health, or goods of another. 
Here Locke deduces the power that one man 
may have over another ; community could not 
exist if transgressors were not punished. Every 
wrong-doer places himself in " a state of war." 
Here is the difference between the state of 
nature and the state of w^ar, which men, says 
Locke, have confounded — alluding probably to 
Ilobbes's notion of the lawlessness of human 
society in the original condition. 

The portion of Locke's treatise which was 
not accepted by the French theorists was that 
relating to property. Property in lands or 
goods is due wholly and only to the labor man 
has put into it. By labor he has removed it 
from the common state in which nature has 
placed it, and annexed something to it that 
excludes the common rights of other men. 

Eousseau borrowed from Hobbes as well as 
from Locke in his conception of popular sover- 



6S KKIJLTION aF UTEKATURK TO IJFK 

eifirnt y : but this was not his only hick of orig- 
inaUty. His disooui'so on primitive s^xnoty, his 
iinsoioutitio and unhistorio notions about the 
original condition of man, wore those common 
in the middle of the eighteenth century. All 
the thinkers and philosophers and tine ladies 
and gentlemen assumeii a certain state of nat- 
ure, and built upon it, out of wonis and phrases, 
an airy and easy reconstruction of s^xnety, with- 
out a thought of investigating the past, or 
inquiring into the development of mankind. 
Every one talkeii of *' the state of nature " as 
if he knew all about it^ ** The conditions of 
primitive man," says Mr. Morley, ** were dis- 
cussed by very incompetent ladies and gentle- 
men at convivial supper -parties, and settkxl 
with complete assurance," That was the age 
when solit^xry Frenchmen plungeii into the 
wilderness of North America, conlldently ex- 
ixx'-ting to recover the goldeii age under the 
shelter of a AvigNMim and in the society of a 
squaw. 

The stAto of nature of Rousseau was a state 
in which inequality did not exist, and with a 
fervid rhetoric he tried to persuade his readers 
that it w:xs the happier state. He reov^gnized 
inequality, it is true, as a wonl of two ditfer- 
ent meanings* first, ph}'sical inequality, differ- 



09 

enco of ago, strength, health, and of intelligence 
juui character; second, moral and political in- 
ecjuality, diireronce of ])rivilo^es which some 
enjoy to the detriment of others — such as 
riches, honor, power. Tlie first diirerence is 
cstahHshed by nature, the second by man. So 
long, however, as the state of nature endures, 
no disadvantages ilow from the natural in- 
equalities. 

In Kousseau's account of the means by 
which ecpiality was lost, tlie incoming of the 
ideas of property is prominent. From prop- 
erty arose civil society. With proj)erty came 
in inequality, llis cxi)osition of inequality is 
confused, and it is not possible always to tell 
whether ho moans inequality of possessions or 
of political rights, llis contemporary, Morel- 
ly, who published the Ikmlcade in 17515, was 
troubled by no such ambiguity. lie accepts 
the doctrine that men are formed by laws, but 
holds that they are by nature good, and that 
laws, by establishing a division of the products 
of nature, broke up the sociability of men, and 
that all political and moral evils are the result 
of private pi'oporty. Political inequality is an 
accident of inequality of possessions, and the 
renovation of the latter lies in the abolition of 
the former. 



70 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

The opening sentence of the Contrat-Social 
is, '' Man is born free, and everywhere he is a 
slave," a statement which it is difficult to recon- 
cile with the fact that every human being is 
born helpless, dependent, and into conditions 
of subjection, conditions that we have no rea- 
son to suppose were ever absent from the race. 
But Eousseau never said, "All men are born 
equal." He recognized, as we have seen, nat- 
ural inequality. What he held w^as that the 
artificial differences springing from the social 
union were disproportionate to the capacities 
springing from the original constitution ; and 
that society, as now organized, tends to make 
the gulf wider between those who have privi- 
leges and those who have none. 

The well-known theory upon which Kous- 
seau's superstructure rests is that society is 
the result of a compact, a partnership between 
men. They have not made an agreement to 
submit their individual sovereignty to some 
superior power, but they have made a covenant 
of brotherhood. It is a contract of association. 
Men were, and ought to be, equal co-operators, 
not only in politics, but in industries and all 
the affairs of life. All the citizens are partici- 
pants in the sovereign authority. Their sov- 
ereignty is inalienable ; power may be trans- 



"equality" 71 

raitted, but not will ; if the people promise to 
obey, it dissolves itself by the very act — if 
there is a master, there is no longer a people. 
Sovereignty is also indivisible ; it cannot be 
split up into legislative, judiciary, and execu- 
tive power. 

Society being the result of a compact made 
by men, it followed that the partners could 
at any time remake it, their sovereignty being 
inalienable. And this the French socialists, 
misled by a priori notions, attempted to do, 
on the theory of the Oontrat-Social, as if they 
had a tabula rasa, without regarding the ex- 
isting constituents of society, or traditions, or 
historical growths. 

Equality, as a phrase, having done duty as a 
dissolvent, was pressed into service as a con- 
structor. As this is not so much an essay on 
the nature of equality as an attempt to indi- 
cate some of the modern tendencies to carry 
out what is illusory in the dogma, perhaps 
enough has been said of this period. Mr. 
Morley very well remarks that the doctrine of 
equalit}^ as a demand for a fair chance in the 
world is unanswerable; but that it is false 
when it puts him who uses his chance well on 
the same level with him who uses it ill. There 
is no doubt that when Condorcet said, "I^ot 



TO RELATION OF LITEKATUKE Tl"* IJFE 

only equality of right, but equality of fact, is 
the goal of tho social ;irt; ' he uttered the sen- 
timents of the socialists of the Kevolutioii. 

Tho next authoritative announcement of 
equality, to which it is necessary to ix^fer, is 
in tho American Declaration of Independence, 
in these avoixIs : '' AVo hold these truths to be 
self-evident: that all men are created equal; 
that they ai*e endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights : that among these 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; 
that to secure these rights governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their just 
poAver from the consent of the governed." 
And the Declaration goes on, in temperate 
and guarded language, to assert the right of a 
people to change their form of government 
when it becomes destructive of the ends 
named. 

Although the genesis of these sentiments 
seems to be French rather than English, and 
equality is not deHned, and critics have differed 
ixs to whether the equality clause is indepen- 
dent or qualified by what follows, it is not 
necessary to suppose that Thomas Jetfei'son 
meant anything inconsistent with the admit- 
ted facts of nature and of history. It is im- 
portant to bear in mind that the statesmen of 



" EQUALITY " 78 

our Revolution were inaugurating a political 
and not a social revolution, and that the gra- 
vamen of their protest was against the au- 
thority of a distant crown. Nevertheless, 
these dogmas, independent of the circum- 
stances in which they were uttered, have ex- 
ercised and do exercise a very powerful influ- 
ence upon the thinking of mankind on social 
and political topics, and are being applied 
without limitations, and without recognition 
of the fact that if they are true, in the sense 
meant by their originators, they are not the 
whole truth. It is to be noticed that rights 
are mentioned, but not duties, and that if po- 
litical rights only are meant, political duties 
are not inculcated as of equal moment. It is 
not announced that political power is a func- 
tion to be discharged for the good of the 
whole bod}'-, and not a mere right to be en- 
joyed for the advantage of the possessor ; and 
it is to be noted also that this idea did not 
enter into the conception of Eousseau. 

The dogma that " government derives its 
just power from the consent of the governed" 
is entirely consonant ^>^ith the book theories 
of the eighteenth century, and needs to be 
confronted, and practically is confronted, with 
the equally good dogma that " governments 



74 EELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

derive their just power from conformity with 
the principles of justice." We are not to im- 
agine, for instance, that the framers of the 
Declaration really contemplated the exclusion 
from political organization of all higher law 
than that in the " consent of the governed," 
or the application of the theory, let us say, to 
a colony composed for the most part of out- 
casts, murderers, thieves, and prostitutes, or to 
such states as to-day exist in the Orient. The 
Declaration was framed for a highly intelli- 
gent and virtuous society. 

Many writers, and some of them English, 
have expressed curiosity, if not wonder, at the 
different fortunes which attended the doctrine 
of equality in America and in France. The 
explanation is on the surface, and need not be 
sought in the fact of a difference of social and 
political level in the two countries at the start, 
nor even in the further fact that the colonies 
were already accustomed to self-government. 
The simple truth is that the dogmas of the 
Declaration were not put into the fundament- 
al law. The Constitution is the most practical 
state document ever made. It announces no 
dogmas, proclaims no theories. It accepted 
society as it was, with its habits and tradi- 
tions, raising no abstract questions whether 



" EQUALITY " 75 

men are born free or equal, or how society 
ought to be organized. It is simply a working 
compact, made by " the people," to promote 
union, establish justice, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty ; and the equality is in the as- 
sumption of the right of "the people of the 
United States " to do this. And yet, in a re- 
cent number of Blackwood's Magazine^ a writ- 
er makes the amusing statement, " I have never 
met an American who could deny that, while 
firmly maintaining that the theory was sound 
which, in the beautiful language of the Con- 
stitution, proclaims that all men were born 
equal, he was," etc. 

An enlightening commentary on the mean- 
ing of the Declaration, in the minds of the 
American statesmen of the period, is fur- 
nished by the opinions which some of them ex- 
pressed upon the French Eevolution while it 
was in progress. Gouverneur Morris, minister 
to France in 1789, was a conservative repub- 
lican ; Thomas Jefferson was a radical demo- 
crat. Both of them had a warm sympathy 
with the French "people" in the Eevolution ; 
both hoped for a republic ; both recognized, 
we may reasonably infer, the sufficient cause 
of the Eevolution in the long-continued cor- 
ruption of court and nobility, and the intoler- 



76 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

able sufferings of the lower orders ; and both, 
we have equal reason to believe, thought that 
a fair accommodation, short of a dissolution 
of society, was defeated by the imbecility of 
the king and the treachery and malignity of 
a considerable portion of the nobility. The 
Eevolution was not caused by theories, how- 
ever much it ma}^ have been excited or guided 
by them. But both Morris and Jefferson saw 
the futility of the application of the abstract 
dogma of equality and the theories of the 
Social Contract to the reconstruction of gov- 
ernment and the reorganization of society in 
France. 

If the aristocracy were malignant — though 
numbers of them were far from being so — 
there was also a malignant prejudice aroused 
against them, and M. Taine is not far wrong 
when he says of this prejudice, *' Its hard, dry 
kernel consists of the abstract idea of equal- 
ity." "^ Taine's French jRevolution is c\"nical, 
and, with all its accumulation of material, 
omits some facts necessary to a philosophical 
history ; but a passage following that quoted 
is worth reproducing in this connection : " The 

* The Fi-ench Bewlution. By H. A. Taine. Vol. i., bk. 
ii., chap, ii., sec. iii. Translation. New York: Henry 
Holt & Co. 



" EQUALITY " 77 

treatment of the nobles of the Assembly is the 
same as the treatment of the Protestants by 
Louis Xiy. . . . One hundred thousand French- 
men driven out at the end of the seventeenth 
century, and one hundred thousand driven out 
at the end of the eighteenth ! Mark hoAV an 
intolerant democracy completes the work of an 
intolerant monarchy ! The moral aristocracy 
was mowed down in the name of uniformity ; 
the social aristocracy is mowed down in the 
name of equality. For the second time an 
abstract principle, and with the same effect, 
buries its blade in the heart of a living soci- 
ety." 

JS'otwithstanding the world-wide advertise- 
ment of the French experiment, it has taken 
almost a century for the dogma of equality, 
at least outside of France, to filter down from 
the speculative thinkers into a general popu- 
lar acceptance, as an active principle to be 
used in the shaping of affairs, and to become 
more potent in the popular mind than tradi- 
tion or habit. The attempt is made to apply 
it to society with a brutal logic; and we 
might despair as to the result, if we did not 
know that the world is not ruled by logic. 
Nothing is so fascinating in the hands of the 
half -informed as a neat dogma ; it seems the 



78 KELATION OF UTEKATrKE TO LIFE 

perfect key to all dijfficulties. The formula is 
applied in contempt and ignorance of the past, 
as if bnilding np were as easy as pnlling down, 
and as if society were a machine to be moved 
by mechanical appliances, and not a hving or- 
ganism composed of distinct and sensitive be- 
ings. Along with the spread of a belief in 
the uniformity of natural law has unfortu- 
nately gone a suggestion of parallelism of the 
moral law to it, and a notion that if we can 
discover the right formula, human society and 
o:overnment can be oriranized with a malhe- 
matical justice to all the parts. By many the 
dogma of equality is held to be that formula, 
and relief from the greater evils of the social 
state is expected from its logical extension. 

Let us now consider some of the present 
movements and tendencies that are related, 
more or less, to this belief : 

I. Absolute equality is seen to depend upon 
absolute supremacy of the state. Professor 
Henry Fawcett says, "Excessive dependence 
on the state is the most prominent character- 
istic of modern socialism.-- '• These proposals 
to prohibit inheritance, to abolish private prop- 
erty, and to make the state the owner of all 
the capital and the administrator of the entire 
industry of the country are put forward as rep- 



" ^?/^TTATTmv" 



EQUALITY " 79 

resenting socialism in its ultimate and highest 
development." * 

Society and government should be recast 
till they conform to the theory, or, let us say, 
to its exaggerations. Men can unmake what 
they have made. There is no higher author- 
ity anywhere than the will of the majority, 
no matter what the majority is in intellect 
and morals. Fifty-one ignorant men have a 
natural right to legislate for the one hundred, 
as against forty-nine intelligent men. 

All men being equal, one man is as fit to 
legislate and execute as another. A recently 
elected Congressman from Maine vehemently 
repudiated in a public address, as a slander, 
the accusation that he was educated. The 
theory was that, uneducated, he was the prop- 
er representative of the average ignorance of 
his district, and that ignorance ought to be 
represented in the legislature in kind. The 
ignorant know better what they want than 
the educated know for them. " Their educa- 
tion [that of college men] destroys natural 
perception and judgment; so that cultivated 
people are one-sided, and their judgment is 



* " Socialism in Germany and the United States," Fort- 
nightly Review, November, 1878. 



80 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

often inferior to that of the working people." 
" Cultured people have made up their minds, 
and are hard to move." " I^o lawyer should 
be elected to a place in any legislative body." * 

Experience is of no account, neither is his- 
tory, nor tradition, nor the accumulated wis- 
dom of ages. On all questions of political econ- 
omy, finance, morals, the ignorant man stands 
on a par with the best informed as a legisla- 
tor. We might cite any number of the re- 
sults of these illusions. A member of a re- 
cent House of Eepresentatives declared that 
we " can repair the losses of the war by the 
issue of a sufficient amount of paper money." 
An intelligent mechanic of our acquaintance, 
a leader among the l^ationals, urging the the- 
ory of his party, that banks should be de- 
stroyed, and that the government should issue 
to the people as much " paper money" as they 
need, denied the right of banks or of any in- 
dividuals to charge interest on money. Yet 
he would take rent for the house he owns. 

Laws must be the direct expression of the 
will of the majority, and be altered solely on 
its will. It would be well, therefore, to have 

*Opinioiis of working-men, reported in "The Nationals, 
tbeir Origin and their Aims," The Atlantic Monthly, No- 
vember, 1878. 



** :eQUALItY " 81 

a continuous election, so that, any day, the 
electors can change their representative for a 
new man. "If my caprice be the source of 
law, then my enjoyment may be the source of 
the division of the nation's resources." *^ 

Property is the creator of inequality, and 
this factor in our artificial state can be elim- 
inated only by absorption. It is the duty of 
the government to provide for all the people, 
and the sovereign people will see to it that 
it does. The election franchise is a natural 
right — a man's Aveapon to protect himself. It 
may be asked. If it is just this, and not a sa- 
cred trust accorded to be exercised for the ben- 
efit of society, why may not a man sell it, if 
it is for his interest to do so ? 

What is there illogical in these- positions 
from the premise given? "Communism," 
says Eoscher,f " is the logically not inconsist- 
ent exaggeration of the principle of equality. 
Men who hear themselves designated as ' the 
sovereign people,' and their welfare as the su- 
preme law of the state, are more apt than 
others to feel more keenly the distance which 
separates their own misery from the super- 

* Stabl's Rechtsphilosoi-)hie, quoted by Rosclier. 
\ Political Economy, bk. i., ch. v., § 78. 



83 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

abundance of others. And, indeed, to what 
an extent our physical wants are determined 
by our intellectual mould !" 

The tendency of the exaggeration of man's 
will as the foundation of government is dis- 
tinctly materialistic ; it is a self-sufficiency that 
shuts out God and the higher law.* We need 
to remember that the Creator of man, and 
not man himself, formed society and instituted 
government ; that God is always behind hu- 
man society and sustains it ; that marriage 
and the family and all social relations are di- 
vinely established ; that man's duty, coinciding 

* "And, indeed, if the will of man is all-powerful, if 
states are to be distinguished from one another only by 
their boundaries, if everything may be changed like the 
scenery in a play by a flourish of the magic wand of a 
system, if man may arbitrarily make the right, if nations 
can be put through evolutions like regiments of troops, 
what a field would the world present for attempts at the 
realizations of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation 
would be offered to take possession, by main force, of the 
government of human affairs, to destroy the rights of 
property and the rights of capital, to gratify ardent long- 
ings without trouble, and to provide the much- coveted 
means of enjoytaent ! The Titans have tried to scale the 
heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading material- 
ism. Purely speculative dogmatism sinks into material- 
ism. " (M. Wolowski's Essay on the Historical Method, pre- 
fixed to his translation of Roschcr's Political Economy.) 



" EQUALITY " 



with his right, is, by the light of history, by 
experience, by observation of men, and by the 
aid of revelation, to find out and make opera- 
tive, as well as he can, the divine law in hu- 
man affairs. And it may be added that the 
sovereignty of the people, as a divine trust, 
may be as logically deduced from the divine 
institution of government as the old divine 
right of kings. Government, by whatever 
name it is called, is a matter of experience 
and expediency. If we submit to the will of 
the majority, it is because it is more conven- 
ient to do so ; and if the republic or the democ- 
racy vindicate itself, it is because it works best, 
on the whole, for a particular people. But it 
needs no prophet to say that it will not work 
long if God is shut out from it, and man, in a 
full-blown socialism, is considered the ultimate 
authority. 

II. Equality of education. In our Ameri- 
can system there is, not only theoretically but 
practically, an equality of opportunity in the 
public schools, which are free to all children, 
and rise by gradations from the primaries to 
the high -schools, in which the curriculum in 
most respects equals, and in variety exceeds, 
that of many third-class "colleges." In these 
schools nearly the whole round of learning, in 



84 KELATIOX OF UTEKATrKE TO LIFE 

languages, science, and art, is touched. The 
system has seemed to be the best that could 
be devised for a free society, where all take 
part in the government, and where so much 
depends upon the intelligence of the electoi*s. 
Certain objections, however, have been made 
to it. As this essay is intended only to be 
tentative, we shall state some of them, with- 
out indulging in lengthy comments. 

{l^ The first charge is superficiality — a nec- 
essary consequence of attempting too much — 
and a T\-ant of adequate preparation for special 
pursuits in life. 

(2.) A uniformity in mediocrity is alleged 
from the use of the same text-books and meth- 
ods in all schools, for all grades and capaci- 
ties. This is one of the most common criti- 
cisms on our social state by a certain class of 
writers in Enirland, who take an unflairfrinfi: 
interest in our development. One answer to 
it is this : There is more reason to expect va- 
riety of development and character in a gen- 
erally educated than in an ignorant commu- 
nity : there is no such, uniformity as the dull 
level of ignorance. 

(3.) It is said that secular education — and 
the general schools open to all in a communi- 
t V of mixed reliirions must be secular — is train- 



85 



ing the rising generation to be materialists and 
socialists. 

(4.) Perhaps a better-founded charge is that 
a system of equal education, with its superfi- 
ciality, creates discontent with the condition 
in which a majority of men must be— that of 
labor— a distaste for trades and for hand- work, 
an idea that what is called intellectual labor 
(let us say, casting up accounts in a shop, or 
writing trashy stories for a sensational news- 
paper) is more honorable than physical labor ; 
and encourages the false notion that " the ele- 
vation of the working classes " implies the re- 
moval of men and women from those classes. 

We should hesitate to draw adverse conclu- 
sions in regard to a system yet so young that 
its results cannot be fairly estimated. Only 
after two or three generations can its effects 
upon the character of a great people be meas- 
ured. Observations differ, and testimony is 
difficult to obtain. We think it safe to say 
that those states are most prosperous which 
have the best free schools. But if the philoso- 
pher inquires as to the general effect upon the 
national character in respect to the objections 
named, he must wait for a reply. 

III. The pursuit of the chimera of social 
equality, from the belief that it should logi- 



86 KICLATION OF LITRRATURK TO IJFE 

CxOlly follow politiciil equality ; resultiTiir in ex- 
tra vacinuw luisappliojition of natural oapaol- 
tioji, a notion that physical labor is dishonor- 
able, or that the state should eompel all to 
labor alike, and in etforts to remove inequali- 
ties of condition by legislation. 

IV. The ei]uality of the sexes. The stir in 
the middle of the eighteenth century gave a 
great impetus to the emancipition of Avoman ; 
though, curiously enough, Rousseau, in unfold- 
ing his plan of eiiueation for Sophie, in f^m il<\ 
inculcates an almost Oriental subjection of 
woman — her education simply that she may 
please man. The true enfranchisement of 
woman — that is, the re^x^gnition (by herself as 
well as by man) of her rciU place in the econ- 
omy of the world, in the full development of 
her cajx\cities — is the givatest gain to civiliza- 
tion since the Christian era. The movement 
has it« excesses, and the gain has not been 
without U>ss. "AVhen we turn to modern lit- 
ertiture," writes Mr. ALorley, ** from the pages 
in which Fenelon speaks of the educiition of 
girls, who does not feel that the world has 
lost a sacreil accent — that some inetfable es- 
sence has passed out from our hearts T' 

How far the exj>ectation has been realized 
that women, in tiction, for instance, would be 



" EQUALITY " 87 

nioro accurately described, better understood, 
and appear as nobler and lovelier beings when 
women wrote the novels, this is not the j)lace 
to inquire. The movement has results which 
are unavoidable in a period of transition, and 
probably only temporary. The education of 
woman and the development of her powers 
hold the greatest promise for the regenera- 
tion of society. 13ut this development, yet in 
its infancy, and pursued with much crudeness 
and misconception of the end, is not enough. 
Woman would not only be equal with man, 
but would be like him ; that is, perform in 
society the functions he now performs. Here, 
again, the notion of equality is pushed tow- 
ards uniformity. The reformers admit struct- 
ural differences in the sexes, though these, they 
say, are greatly exaggerated by subjection ; 
but the functional differences are mainly to be 
eliminated. Women ought to mingle in all 
the occupations of men, as if the physical dif- 
ferences did not exist. The movement goes 
to obliterate, as far as possible, the distinction 
between sexes. Nature is, no doubt, amused 
at this attempt. A recent writer * says : " The 

* "Biology and Woman's liiglits," quarterly Journal 
of Science, November, 1878. 



88 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

femme libre [free woman] of the new social 
order may, indeed, escape the charge of neg- 
lecting her family and her household by con- 
tending that it is not her vocation to become 
a wife and a mother ! ^Yhy, then, we ask, is 
she constituted a woman at all ? Merely that 
she may become a sort of second-rate man V 

The truth is that this movement, based al- 
ways upon a misconception of equaht}", so far 
as it would change the duties of the sexes, is a 
retrograde."^ One of the most striking features 

* " It has been frequently observed that among declining 
nations the social differences between the two sexes are 
first obliterated, and afterwards even the intellectual dif- 
ferences. The more masculine the women become, the 
more effeminate become the men. It is no good symptom 
when there are almost as many female writers and female 
rulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, 
in the Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Civsars. 
What to-day is called by many the emancipation of woman 
w^ould ultimately end in the dissolution of the family, 
and, if carried out, render poor service to the majority of 
women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the 
same level, and if in the competition between the two 
sexes nothing but an actual superiority should decide, it is 
to be feared that woman would soon be relegated to a 
condition as hard as that in which she is found among all 
barbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher 
civilization that have emancipated woman. Those the- 
orizers who, led astray by the dark side of higher civiliza- 
tion, preach a community of goods, generally contemplate 



ii TTl/^TT A T Tmxr " 



EQUALITY " 89 

in our progress from barbarism to civilization 
is the proper adjustment of the work for men 
and women. One test of a civilization is the 
difference of this work. This is a question not 
merely of division of labor, but of differentia- 
tion with regard to sex. It not only takes into 
account structural differences and physiologi- 
cal disadvantages, but it recognizes the finer 
and higher use of woman in society. 

The attainable, not to say the ideal, society 
requires an increase rather than a decrease of 
the differences between the sexes. The differ- 
ences may be due to physical organization, but 
the structural divergence is but a faint type of 
deeper separation in mental and spiritual con- 
stitution. That which makes the charm and 
power of woman, that for which she is created, 
is as distinctly feminine as that which makes 
the charm and power of men is masculine. 
Progress requires constant differentiation, and 
the line of this is the development of each sex 
in its special functions, each being true to the 



in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation 
of woman a more or lees developed form of a community 
of wives. The grounds of the two institutions are very 
similar." (Roscher's Political Economy, § 250). Note also 
that difference in costumes of the sexes Is least apparent 
among lowly civilized peoples. 



90 RELATION OF LTTERATrKE TO LIFE 

highest ideal for itself, which is not that the 
woman should be a man, or the man a woman. 
The enjoyment of social life rests very large- 
ly upon the encounter and play of the subtle 
pecuharities which mark the two sexes : and 
society, in the limited sense of the word, not 
less than the whole structure of our civiliza- 
tion, requires the deveh^pment of these pecu- 
liarities. It is in divei-sity, and not in an equal- 
ity tending to uniformity, that we are to expect 
the best results from the race. 

Y. Equality of races ; or rather a removal 
of the inequaUties, social and political, arising 
in the contact of different races by intermar- 
riage. 

Perhaps equahty is hardly the word to use 
here, since uniformity is the thing aimed at ; 
but the root of the proposal is in the dogma 
we are considering. The tendency of the age 
is to uniformity. The facilities of travel and 
conmmnication, the new inventions and the 
use of machinery in manufacturing, bring men 
into close and uniform relations, and induce 
the disappearance of national characteristics 
and of race peculiarities. Men, the world over 
are getting to dress alike, eat alike, and dis- 
believe in the same things. It is the senti- 
mental complaint of the traveller that his 



" EQUALITY " 91 

search for the picturesque is ever more dif- 
ficult, that race distinctions and habits are in 
a way to be improved off the face of tlie eartli, 
and that a most uninteresting monotony is 
supervening. The compkiint is not wholly 
sentimental, and has a deeper philosophical 
reason than the mere pleasure in variety on 
this planet. 

We find a striking illustration of the equaliz- 
ing, not to say levelling, tendency of the age in 
an able paper by Canon George Eawlinson, of 
the University of Oxford, contributed recently 
to an American periodical of a high class and 
conservative character."^ This paper proposes, 
as a remedy for the social and political evils 
caused by the negro element in our population, 
the miscegenation of the white and black races, 
to the end that the black race may be wholly 
absorbed in the white — an absorption of four 
millions by thirty-six millions, which he thinks 
might reasonably be expected in about a cen- 
tury, when the lower type would disappear 
altogether. 

Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is 
not equal to the pleasure of absorbing, and we 

* " Duties of Higher towards Lower Races." By George 
Rawliuson. Princeton Review. November, 1878. New 
York. 



93 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

cannot say how this proposal will commend 
itself to the victims of the euthanasia. The 
results of miscegenation on this continent — 
black with red, and white with black — the 
results morally, intellectually, and physically, 
are not such as to make it attractive to the 
American people. 

It is not, hoAvever, upon sentimental grounds 
that we oppose this extension of the exag- 
gerated dogma of equality. Our objection is 
deeper. Eace distinctions ought to be main- 
tained for the sake of the best development of 
the race, and for the continuance of that mutual 
reaction and play of peculiar forces between 
races which promise the higliest development 
for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may 
suppose, that differentiation has gone on in the 
world ; and we doubt that either benevolence 
or self-interest requires this age to attempt to 
restore an assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the 
race traits in a tiresome homoo-eneitv. 

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and 
the more varied the relations interchanged the 
higher the life. We want not only different 
races, but different civilizations in different 
parts of the globe. 

A much more philosophical view of the Afri- 
can problem and the proper destiny of the 



" EQUALITY " 93 

negro race than that of Canon Kawlinson is 
given by a recent colored writer,* an official 
tn the government of Liberia. "We are mis- 
taken, says this excellent observer, in regard- 
ing Africa as a land of a homogeneous pop- 
ulation, and in confounding the tribes in a 
promiscuous manner. There are negroes and 
neo-roes. "The numerous tribes inhabiting 
the vast continent of Africa can no more be 
regarded as in every respect equal than the 
numerous peoples of Asia or Europe can be so 
regarded ;" and we are not to expect the civil- 
ization of Africa to be under one government, 
but in a great variety of states, developed ac- 
cording to tribal and race affinities. A still 
greater mistake is this : 

" The mistake which Europeans often make 
in considering questions of negro improvement 
and the future of Africa is in supposing that 
the negro is the European in embryo, in the 
undeveloped stage, and that when, by-and-by, 
he shall enjoy the advantages of civihzation 
and culture, he will become like the European ; 
in other words, that the negro is on the same 
line of progress, in the same groove, with the 
European, but infinitely in the rear. . . . This 

* ' ' Africa aud the Africans." By Edmund W. Blydcn. 

Frasefs Magazine, August, 1878. 



94 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

view proceeds upon the assumption that the 
two races are called to the same work, and 
are alike in potentiality and ultimate develop- 
ment, the negro only needing the element of 
time, under certain circumstances, to become 
European. But to our mind it is not a ques- 
tion between the two races of inferiority or 
superiority. There is no absolute or essential 
superiority on the one side, or absolute or es- 
sential inferiority on the other side. It is a 
question of difference of endowment and dif- 
ference of destiny. No amount of training or 
culture will make the negro a European. On 
the other hand, no lack of training or defi- 
ciency of culture will make the European a 
negro. The two races are not moving in the 
same groove, with an immeasurable distance 
between them, but on parallel lines. They 
will never meet in the plane of their activities 
so as to coincide in capacity or performance. 
They are not identical, as some think, but iin- 
equal; they are distinct, but ecjual — an idea 
that is in no way incompatible Avith the Script- 
ure truth that God hath made of one blood all 
nations of men." 

The writer goes on, in a strain that is not 
mere fancy, but that involves one of the truths 
of inequality, to say that each race is endowed 



" l^^r^TT A T Trnv " 



EQUALITY " 95 

with peculiar talents ; that the negro has apti- 
tudes and capacities which the world needs, 
and will lack until he is normally trained. In 
the grand symphony of the universe, " there 
are several sounds not yet brought out, and 
the feeblest of all is that hitherto produced 
by the negro ; but he alone can furnish it." 
" When the African shall come forward with 
his peculiar gifts, they will fill a place never 
before occupied." In short, the African must 
be civilized in the line of his capacities. " The 
present practice of the friends of Africa is 
to frame laws according to their own notions 
for the government and improvement of this 
people, whereas God has already enacted the 
laws for the government of their affairs, which 
laws should be carefully ascertained, inter- 
preted, and applied ; for until they are found 
out and conformed to, all labor will be inef- 
fective and resultless." 

We have thus passed in review some of the 
tendencies of the age. We have only touched 
the edges of a vast subject, and shall be quite 
satisfied if we have suggested thought in the 
direction indicated. But in this limited view 
of our complex human problem it is time to 
ask if we have not pushed the dogma of equal- 
ity far enough. Is it not time to look the 



06 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

facts squarely in the face, and conform to 
them ill our efforts for social and political 
amelioration ? 

Inequality appears to be the divine order; 
it always has existed ; undoubted!}" it will 
continue ; all our theories and a priori specu- 
lations will not change the nature of things. 
Even inequality of condition is the basis of 
progress, the incentive to exertion. Fortu- 
nately, if to-day we could make every man 
white, every woman as like man as nature per- 
mits, give to every human being the same 
opportunity of education, and divide equally 
among all the accumulated wealth of the 
world, to-morrow differences, unequal posses- 
sion, and differentiation would begin again. 
We are attempting the regeneration of society 
w^itli a misleading phase ; we are wasting our 
time with a theory that does not fit the facts. 

There is an equality, but it is not of out- 
ward show ; it is independent of condition ; it 
does not destroy property, nor ignore the dif- 
ference of sex, nor obliterate race traits. It 
is the equalitv of men before God, of men be- 
fore the law ; it is the equal honor of all honor- 
able labor. No more pernicious notion ever ob- 
tained lodgement in society than the common 
one that to '' rise in the world " is necessarily 



" EQUALITY " 97 

to change the '^condition." Let there be con- 
tent with condition ; discontent with individual 
ignorance and imperfection. " We want," says 
Emerson, " not a farmer, but a man on a 
farm." What a mischievous idea is that which 
has grown, even in the United States, that man- 
ual labor is discreditable! There is surely 
some defect in the theory of equality in our 
society w^hich makes domestic service to be 
shunned as if it w^ere a disgrace. 

It must be observed, further, that the dogma 
of equality is not satisfied by the usual admis- 
sion that one is in favor of an equality of rights 
and opportunities, but is against the sweeping 
application of the theory made by the social- 
ists and communists. The obvious reply is 
that equal rights and a fair chance are not 
pos '^'> without equality of condition, and 
that property and the whole artificial consti- 
tution of society necessitate inequality of con- 
dition. The damage from the current exag- 
geration of equality is that the attempt to 
realize the dogma in fact — and the attempt is 
everywhere on foot — can lead only to mischief 
and disappointment. 

It would be considered a humorous suggest- 
ion to advocate inequality as a theory or as a 
working dogma. Let us recognize it, however, 



98 KELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

as a fact, and shape the efforts for the im- 
provement of the race in accordance with it, 
encouraging it in some directions, restraining 
it from injustice in others. Working by this 
recognition, we shall save the race from many 
failures and bitter disappointments, and spare 
the world the spectacle of republics ending 
in despotism and experiments in government 
ending in anarchy. 

(1880.) 



.o'llp- 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTUEE TO ME?* 

Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard 
a voice calling me to ascend the platform, and 
there to stand and deliver. The voice was the 
voice of President North ; the language was an 
excellent imitation of that used by Cicero and 
Julius Csesar. I remember the flattering invi- 
tation—it is the classic tag that clings to the 
graduate long after he has forgotten the gen- 
der of the nouns that end in um— orator jprox- 
iimts, the grateful voice said, ascendat, videlicet, 
and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator, and 
an ascendmg orator, in such a sonorous tongue, 
in the face of a world waiting for orators, stirred 
one's blood like the herald's trumpet when the 
lists are thrown open. Alas ! for most of us, 
who crowded so eagerly into the arena, it was 
the last appearance as orators on any stage. 

The facility of the world for swallowing up 

* Delivered before tlie Alumni of Hamiltoa College, 
Clinton, N. Y., Wednesday, June 26th, 1872. 

LOFC. 



103 RELATION OF LITEEATUKE TO LIFE 

orators, and company after company of edu- 
cated young men, has been remarked. But it 
is almost incredible to me now that the class 
of 1S51, Avith its classic sympathies and its 
many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the 
flood of the world so soon and so silently, 
causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothly flow- 
ing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has 
been repeated for twenty years. Do the young 
gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry 
on their ordinary convei'sation in the Latin 
tongue, and their familiar vacation correspond- 
ence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope 
so. I hope they are more proficient in such 
exercises than the young gentlemen of twenty 
years ago were, for I have still great faith in 
a culture that is so far from any sordid aspira- 
tion as to approach the ideal; although the 
young graduate is not long in learning that 
there is an indifference in the public mind 
with regard to the first aorist that amounts 
nearly to apathy, and that millions of his fel- 
low-creatures will probably live and die with- 
out the consolations of the second aorist It 
is a melancholy fact that, after a thousand 
years of missionary effort, the vast majority 
of civilized men do not know that gei^unds are 
found only in the singular number. 



WHAT 18 YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 103 

I confess that this failure of the annual 
graduating class to make its expected impres- 
sion on the world has its pathetic side. Youth 
is credulous — as it always ought to be — and 
full of hope — else the world were dead already 
— and the graduate steps out into life with an 
ingenuous self-confidence in his resources. It 
is to him an event, this turning-point in the 
career of what he feels to be an important and 
immortal being. His entrance is public and 
with some dignity of display. For a day the 
world stops to see it; the newspapers spread 
abroad a report of it, and the modest scholar 
feels that the eyes of mankind are fixed on 
him in expectation and desire. Though mod- 
est, he is not insensible to the responsibility of 
his position. He has only packed away in his 
mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not 
intend to be stingy about communicating it to 
the world which is awaiting his graduation. 
Fresh from the communion with great thoughts 
in great literatures, he is in haste to give man- 
kind the benefit of them, and lead it on into 
new enthusiasm and new conquests. 

The world, however, is not very much ex- 
cited. The birth of a child is in itself marvel- 
lous, but it is so common. Over and over again, 
for hundreds of years, these young gentlemen 



104 EELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

have been coming forward with their speci- 
mens of learning tied up in neat little parcels, 
all ready to administer, and warranted to be 
of the purest materials. The world is not un- 
kind, it is not even indifferent, but it must be 
confessed that it does not act any longer as if 
it expected to be enlightened. It is generally 
so busy that it does not even ask the young 
gentlemen what they can do, but leaves them 
standing with their little parcels, wondering 
when the person will pass by who requires one 
of them, and when there will happen a little 
opening in the procession into which they can 
fall. They expected that way would be made 
for them with shouts of welcome, but they find 
themselves before long struggling to get even 
a standing-place in the crowd — it is only kings, 
and the nobility, and those fortu nates who 
dwell in the tropics, where bread grows on 
trees and clothing is unnecessary, who have 
reserved seats in this world. 

To the majority of men I fancy that literature 
is very much the same that history is ; and histo- 
ry is presented as a museum of antiquities and 
curiosities, classified, arranged, and labelled. 
One may walk through it as he does through 
the Hotel de Clun}^ ; he feels that he ought to 
be interested in it, but it is very tiresome. 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTUEE TO ME? 105 

Learning is regarded in like manner as an ac- 
cumulation of literature, gathered into great 
storehouses called libraries — the thought of 
which excites great respect in most minds, but 
is ineffably tedious. Year after year and age 
after age it accumulates — this evidence and 
monument of intellectual activity — piling itself 
up in vast collections, which it needs a lifetime 
even to catalogue, and through which the un- 
cultured walk as the idle do through the Brit- 
ish Museum, with no very strong indignation 
against Omar who burned the library at Alex- 
andria. 

To the popular mind this vast accumulation 
of learning in libraries, or in brains that do 
not visibly apply it, is much the same thing. 
The business of the scholar appears to be this 
sort of accumulation ; and the young student, 
who comes to the world with a little portion 
of this treasure dug out of some classic tomb 
or mediaeval museum, is received with little 
more enthusiasm than is the miraculous hand- 
kerchief of St. Yeronica by the crowd of Prot- 
estants to whom it is exhibited on Holy Week 
in St. Peter's. The historian must make his 
museum live again ; the scholar must vivify his 
learning with a present purpose. 

It is unnecessary for me to say that all this 



106 RELATION OF LITERATUKK TO LIFE 

is only from the unsympathetic and worldl}^ 
side. I should think myself a criminal if I 
said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the 
young scholar, or to dash with any scepticism 
his longing and his hope. He has chosen the 
highest. His beautiful faith and his aspiration 
are the light of life. Without his fresh en- 
thusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, 
to art, to culture, the world would be dreary 
enough. Through him comes the ever-spring- 
ing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every 
turn and driven defeated from a hundred 
lields, he carries victory in himself. He be- 
longs to a great and immortal army. Let him 
not be discouraged at his apparent little in- 
fluence, even though every sally of every young 
life may seem like a forlorn -hope. No man 
can see the whole of the battle. It must needs 
be that regiment after regiment, trained, ac- 
complished, gay, and high with hope, shall be 
sent into the field, marching on, into the smoke, 
into the tire, and be swept away. The battle 
s^vallows them, one after the other, and the 
foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorseless 
trumpet calls for more and more. But not in 
vain, for some day, and every day, along the 
line, there is a cry, '^The}' fly! they ^jT and 
the whole army advances, and the flag is plant- 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 107 

ed on an ancient fortress where it never waved 
before. And, even if you never see this, bet- 
ter than inglorious camp-following is it to go 
in with the wasting regiment; to carry the 
colors up the slope of the enemy's works, 
though the next moment you fall and find a 
grave at the foot of the glacis. 

"What are the relations of culture to common 
life, of the scholar to the day-laborer? What 
is the value of this vast accumulation of high- 
er learning, what is its point of contact with 
the mass of humanity, that toils and eats and 
sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, genera- 
tion after generation, in an unvarying round, 
on an unvarying level? We have had dis- 
cussed lately the relation of culture to religion. 
Mr. Froude, with a singular, reactionary inge- 
nuity, has sought to prove that the progress of 
the century, so-called, with all its material al- 
leviations, has done little in regard to a happy 
life, to the pleasure of existence, for the aver- 
age individual Englishman. Into neither of 
these inquiries do I purpose to enter ; but we 
may not unprofitably turn our attention to a 
subject closely connected with both of them. 

It has not escaped your attention that there 
are indications everywhere of what may be 
called a ground-swell. There is not simply an 



lOS RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

inquiry as to tlie value of classic culture, a cer- 
tain jealousy of the schools where it is obtained, 
a rough popular contempt for the graces of 
learning, a failure to see any connection be- 
tween the tirst aorist and the rolling of steel 
rails, but there is arising an angry protest 
aiTvainst the conditions of a life which make 
one free of the serene heio-hts of thoucyht and 
give him range of all intellectual countries, and 
keep another at the spade and the loom, year 
after year, that he may earn food for the day 
and lodging for the night. In our day the 
demand here hinted at has taken more definite 
form and determinate aim, and goes on, visible 
to all men, to unsettle society and change so- 
cial and political relations. The great move- 
ment of labor, extravagant and preposterous 
as are some of its demands, demagogic as are 
most of its leaders, fantastic as are many of its 
theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and 
full of a certain primeval force, and with a 
certain justice in it that never sleeps in human 
affairs, but moves on, blindly often and de- 
structively often, a movement cruel at once 
and credulous, deceived and betrayed, and re- 
venging itself on friends and foes alike. Its 
strength is in the fact that it is natural and 
human ; it might have been predicted from a 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME 5 100 

mere knowledge of human nature, which is al- 
ways restless in any relations it is possible to 
establish, which is always like the sea, seeking 
a level, and never so discontented as when any- 
thing like a level is approximated. 

What is the relation of the scholar to the 
present phase of this movement ? What is the 
relation of culture to it ? By scholar I mean 
the mean who has had the advantages of such 
an institution as this. By culture I mean that 
fine product of opportunity and scholarship 
which is to mere knowledge what manners are 
to the gentleman. The world has a growing 
belief in the profit of knowledge, of informa- 
tion, but it has a suspicion of culture. There 
is a lingering notion in matters religious that 
something is lost by refinement — at least, that 
there is danger that the plain, blunt, essential 
truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. The 
laborer is getting to consent that his son shall 
go to school, and learn how to build an under- , 
shot wheel or to assay metals ; but why plant 
in his mind those principles of taste which will 
make him as sensitive to beauty as to pain, 
why open to him those realms of imagination 
with the illimitable horizons, the contours and 
colors of which can but fill him with indefinite 
longing ? 



110 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

It is not necessary for me in this presence 
to dwell upon the value of culture. I wish 
rather to have you notice the gulf that exists 
between what the majority want to know and 
that fine fruit of knowledge concerning which 
there is so widespread an infidelity. Will cult- 
ure aid a minister in a "protracted meeting"? 
Will the ability to read Chaucer assist a shop- 
keeper ? Will the politician add to the " sweet- 
ness and light " of his lovely career if he can 
read the " Battle of the Frogs and the Mice " in 
the original ? AVhat has the farmer to do with 
the " Eose Garden of Saadi " 1 

I suppose it is not altogether the fault of 
the majority that the true relation of culture 
to common life is so misunderstood. The 
scholar is largely responsible for it; he is 
largely responsible for the isolation of his 
position, and the want of sympath}^ it begets. 
JSTo man can influence his fellows with any 
power who retires into his own selfishness, 
and gives himself to a self-culture which has 
no further object. What is he that he should 
absorb the sweets of the universe, that he 
should hold all the claims of humanity second 
to the perfecting of himself ? This effort to 
save his own soul was common to Goethe and 
Francis of Assisi; under different manifesta- 



WHAT IS YOUK CULTURE TO ME? Ill 

tions it was the same regard for self. And 
where it is an intellectual and not a spiritual 
greediness, I suppose it is what an old writer 
calls " laying up treasures in hell." 

It is not an unreasonable demand of the 
majority that the few who have the advan- 
tages of the training of college and university 
should exhibit the breadth and sweetness of 
a generous culture, and should shed every- 
where that light which ennobles common 
things, and without which life is like one of 
the old landscapes in which the artist forgot 
to put sunlight. One of the reasons why the 
college-bred man does not meet this reasona- 
ble expectation is that his training, too often, 
has not been thorough and conscientious, it 
has not been of himself ; he has acquired, but 
he is not educated. Another is that, if he is 
educated, he is not impressed with the inti- 
macy of his relation to that which is below 
him as well as that which is above him, and 
his culture is out of sympathy with the great 
mass that needs it, and must have it, or it 
will remain a blind force in the world, the 
lever of demagogues who preach social an- 
archy and misname it progress. There is no 
culture so high, no taste so fastidious, no 
grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of 



112 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

art SO exquisite, that it cannot at this hour 
find full play for itself in the broadest fields 
of humanity ; since it is all needed to soften 
the attritions of common life, and guide to 
nobler aspirations the strong materialistic in- 
fluences of our restless society. 

One reason, as I said, for the gulf between 
the majority and the select few to be educa- 
ted is, that the college does not seldom disap- 
point the reasonable expectation concerning 
it. The graduate of the carpenter's shop 
knows how to use his tools — or used to in 
days before superficial training in trades be- 
came the rule. Does the college graduate 
know how to use his tools ? Or has he to set 
about fitting himself for some employment, 
and gaining that culture, that training of him- 
self, that utilization of his information which 
will make him necessary in the world? There 
has been a great deal of discussion whether a 
boy should be trained in the classics or math- 
ematics or sciences or modern languages. I 
feel like saying " yes " to all the various prop- 
ositions. For Heaven's sake train him in some- 
thing, so that he can handle himself, and have 
free and confident use of his powers. There 
isn't a more helpless creature in the universe 
than a scholar with a vast amount of informa- 



WHAT IS YOUK CULTUKE TO ME 5 113 

tion over which he has no control. He is 
Hke a man with a load of hay so badly put 
upon his cart that it all slides off before he 
can get to market. The influence of a man 
on the world is generally proportioned to his 
ability to do something. "When Abraham 
Lincoln was running for the Legislature the 
first time, on the platform of the improvement 
of the navigation of the Sangamon Eiver, he 
went to secure the votes of thirty men who 
were cradling a wheat field. They asked no 
questions about internal improvements, but 
only seemed curious whether Abraham had 
muscle enough to represent them in the Legis- 
lature. The obliging man took up a cradle 
and led the gang round the field. The whole 
thirty voted for him. 

What is scholarship ? The learned Hindu 
can repeat I do not know how many thou- 
sands of fines from the Yedas, and perhaps 
backwards as well as forwards. I heard of 
an excellent old lady who had counted how 
many times the letter A occurs in the Holy 
Scriptures. The Chinese students who aspire 
to honors spend years in verbally memorizing 
the classics— Confucius and Mencius— and re- 
ceive degrees and public advancement upon 
ability to transcribe from memory without 



114 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

the error of a point, or misplacement of a 
smgle tea-chest character, the whole of some 
books of morals. You do not wonder that 
China is to-day more like an herbarium than 
anything else. Learning is a kind of fetish, 
and it has no influence whatever upon the 
great inert mass of Chinese humanity. 

I suppose it is possible for a young gentle- 
man to be able to read — just think of it, after 
ten years of grammar and lexicon, not to 
know Greek literature and have flexible com- 
mand of all its richness and beauty, but to 
read it ! — it is possible, I suppose, for the grad- 
uate of college to be able to read all the 
Greek authors, and yet to have gone, in re- 
gard to his own culture, very little deeper 
than a surface reading of them; to know 
very little of that perfect architecture and 
what it expressed ; nor of that marvellous 
sculpture and the conditions of its immortal 
beauty ; nor of that artistic development 
which made the Acropolis to bud and bloom 
under the blue sky like the final flower of a 
perfect nature ; nor of that philosophy, that 
politics, that society, nor of the life of that 
polished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it 
and the far-reaching, still unexpended effects 
of it. 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 115 

Yet as surely as that nothing perishes, that 
the Providence of God is not a patchwork of 
uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a prog- 
ress, as surely as the Pilgrim embarkation at 
Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of 
Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving 
the colored man permission to ride in a pub- 
lic conveyance and to be buried in a public 
cemetery, so surely has the P^£thLg||^jft, some 
connection with your new State capitol at 
Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser 
of the Peloponnesus some lesson for the 
American day -laborer. The scholar is said 
to be the torch - bearer, transmitting the in- 
creasing light from generation to generation, 
so that the feet of all, the humblest and the 
lowliest, may walk in the radiance and not 
stumble. But he very often carries a dark 
lantern. 

JSTot what is the use of Greek, of any cult- 
ure in art or literature, but what is the good 
to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest 
question of the ditch-digger to the scholar — 
what better off am I for your learning ? And 
the question, in view of the inter-dependence 
of all members of society, is one that cannot 
be put away as idle. One reason why the 
scholar does not make the world of the past, 



116 KKLATIOX OF LITRRATURK TO IJFK 

the world of books, real to his folloAvs and 
sovviceablo to them, is tiuvt it is not ix\il to 
himself, but a mere misubstantial phice of 
intellectual idleness, Avhero ho dallies some 
years befoiv he begins his task in life. And 
another reason is that, while it may be real 
to him, while he is actually cultured and 
trained, he fails to see or to feel that his cult- 
ure is not a thing apart, and that all tho 
world has a right to share its blessed influ- 
ence. Failing to see this, he is isolated, and, 
wanting his sympathy, the untutored world 
mocks at his superlineness and takes its own 
rouixh wav to rou£:her ends. Greek art was 
for the people, Greek poetry was for tho peo- 
ple; Ivaphael painted his innuortal frescoes 
where throui^s could be lifteil in thoufijht and 
feeling by theni ; Michael Angelo hung the 
dome over St. Teter's so that the far-otl' peas- 
ant on the Campagna could see it, and the 
maiden kneeling by tho shrine in the Alban 
hills. Do wo often stop to think what influ- 
ence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of 
high culture, has to-day upon the great mass 
of our people i Why do they ask, what is the 
use of your learning and your art ^ 

The artist, in the retirement of his studio, 
linishes a charming, suggestive, historical pict- 



WHAT IS YOUR cultdkp: to me? 117 

lire. The rich man buys it and hangs it in 
his Jibrary, where the j^rivileged few can see 
it. I do not deny that the average rich man 
needs all the refining influence the picture 
can exert on him, and that the picture is do- 
ing missionary work in his house ; but it is 
nevertheless an example of an educating in- 
fluence withdrawn and appropriated to nar- 
row uses. But the engraver comes, and, by 
his mediating art, transfers it to a thousand 
sheets, and scatters its sweet influence far 
abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, 
its sordidness, pauses a moment to look on 
it — that gray sea -coast, the receding May- 
flower, the two young Pilgrims in the fore- 
ground regarding it, with tender thoughts of 
the far home— all the world looks on it per- 
haps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tear- 
fully, and is touched with the sentiment of it, 
is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the 
sight of that faith and love and resolute de- 
votion which have tinged our early history 
with the faint light of romance. So art is no 
longer the enjoyment of the few, but the help 
and solace of the many. 

The scholar who is cultured by books, re- 
flection, travel, by a refined society, consorts 
with his kind, and more and more removes 



118 RELATION OF LITEK^VrUKK TO LIFE 

himself from the sympathies of common life. 
I know ho^v almost inevitable this is, how al- 
most impossible it is to resist the segregation 
of classes according to the alHnities of taste. 
Bnt by what mediation shall the cultnre that 
is now the possession of the few be made to 
leaven the world and to elevate and sweeten 
ordinary life ? By books ? Yes. By the news- 
paper^ Yes. By the diffusion of works of 
art i Yes. But when all is done that can be 
done by such letters-missive from one class 
to another, there remains the need of more 
personal contact, of a human sympathy, dif- 
fused and living. The world has had enough 
of charities. It wants respect and consideration. 
Wo desire no Ioniser to be Icirislated for, it 
says; we want to be legislated with. AVhydo 
you never come to see me but you bring me 
something^ asks the sensitive and poor seam- 
stress. Do you always give some charity to 
your friends i I want companionship, and not 
cold pieces ; I want to be treated like a human 
being who has nerves and feeling's, and tears 
too, and as much interest in the sunset, and in 
the birth of Christ, perhaps, as you. And the 
mass of uncared-for ignorance and brutality, 
tinding a voice at length, bitterly repels the 
condescensions of charity ; you have your cult- 



WHAT IS YOUK CULTUEE TO MK ^ 119 

ure, your libraries, your fine houses, your 
church, your religion, and your God, too ; let us 
alone, we want none of them. In the bear-pit 
at Berne, the occupants, who are the wards of 
the city, have had meat thrown to them daily 
for I know not how long, but they are not 
tamed by this charity, and would probably eat 
up any careless person who fell into their 
clutches, without apology. 

Do not impute to me quixotic notions with 
regard to the duties of men and women of 
culture, or think that I undervalue the diffi- 
culties in the way, the fastidiousness on the 
one side, or the jealousies on the other. It 
is by no means easy to an active participant 
to define the drift of his own age; but I seem 
to see plainly that unless the culture of the 
age finds means to diffuse itself, working 
downward and reconciling antagonisms by a 
commonness of thought and feeling and aim 
in life, society must more and more separate 
itself into jarring classes, with mutual misun- 
derstandings and hatred and war. To suggest' 
remedies is much more difficult than to see 
evils ; but the comprehension of dangers is the 
first step towards mastering them. The prob- 
lem of our own time— the reconciliation of the 
interests of classes— is as yet very illy defined. 



120 EELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

This great movement of labor, for instance, 
does not know definitely what it wants, and 
those who are spectators do not know what 
their relations are to it. The first thing to be 
done is for them to try to understand each 
other. One class sees that the other has light- 
er or at least different labor, opportunities of 
travel, a more liberal supply of the luxuries of 
life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish 
of the beautiful, the immaterial. Looking only 
at external conditions, it concludes that all it 
needs to come into this better place is wealth, 
and so it organizes war upon the rich, and it 
makes demands of freedom from toil and of 
compensation which it is in no man's power to 
give it, and which would not, if granted over 
and over again, lift it into that condition it 
desires. It is a tale in the Gulistan, that a 
king placed his son with a preceptor, and said, 
"This is your son; educate him in the same 
manner as your own." The preceptor took 
pains with him for a year, but without success, 
whilst his own sons were completed in learn- 
ing and accomplishments. The king reproved 
the preceptor, and said, "You have broken 
your promise, and not acted faithfully." He 
replied, " O king, the education was the same, 
but the capacities are different. Although 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME « 121 

silver and gold are produced from a stone, yet 
these metals are not to be found in every 
stone. The star Canopus shines all over the 
world, but the scented leather comes only from 
Yemen." " 'Tis an absolute, and, as it were, 
a divine perfection," says Montaigne, "for 
a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. 
We seek other conditions, by reason we do not 
understand the use of our own ; and go out of 
ourselves, because we know not how there to 
reside." 

But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for 
us to understand the wishes of those who 
demand a change of condition, and it is nec- 
essary that they should understand the com- 
pensations as well as the limitations of every 
condition. The dervish congratulated himself 
that although the only monument of his grave 
would be a brick, he should at the last day 
arrive at and enter the gate of Paradise 
before the king had got from under the heavy 
stones of his costly tomb. J^othing will bring 
us into this desirable mutual understanding 
except sympathy and personal contact. Laws 
will not do it ; institutions of charity and relief 
will not do it. 

We must believe, for one thing, that the 
graces of culture will not be thrown away if 



133 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

exorcised among the huiublest and the least 
cultured ; it is found out that iiowers are 
often more welcome in the squalid tenement- 
houses of Boston than loaves of bread. It is 
difficult to say exactly how culture can extend 
its influence into places uncongenial and to 
people indifferent to it, but I will try and 
illustrate what I mean by an example or two. 
Criminals in this country, when the law 
took hold of them, used to be turned over to 
the care of men who often had more sympathy 
with the crime than with the criminal, or at 
least to those who were almost as coarse in 
feeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. 
There have been some changes of late yeai's in 
the cai'e of criminals, but does public opinion 
yet everywhere demand that jailei*s and prison- 
keepei*s and executioners of the penal law should 
be men of rellnement, of high character, of any 
degree of culture ? I do not know any class 
more needing the best direct personal influence 
of the best civilization than the criminal. Tlie 
problem of its proper treatment and reforma- 
tion is one of the most pressing, and it needs 
practiciUly the aid of our best men and women. 
I should have great hope of any prison estab- 
lishment at the head of which was a gentleman 
of tine education, the purest tastes, the most 



WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 123 

elevated morality and lively sympathy with 
men as such, provided ho had also will and the 
power of command. T do not know what might 
not bo done for the viciously inclined and the 
transgressors, if they could come under the in- 
fluence of refined men and women. And yet 
you know that a boy or a girl may be arrest- 
ed for crime, and pass from officer to keeper, 
and jailer to warden, and spend years in a 
career of vice and imprisonment, and never 
once see any man or woman, officially, who 
has tastes, or sympathies, or aspirations much 
above that vulgar level whence the criminals 
came. Anybody who is honest and vigilant is 
considered good enough to take charge of 
prison birds. 

The age is merciful and abounds in chari- 
ties — houses of refuge for poor women, soci- 
eties for the conservation of the exposed and 
the reclamation of the lost. It is willing to 
pay liberally for their support, and to hire 
ministers and distributors of its benefactions. 
But it is beginning to see that it cannot hire 
the distribution of love, nor buy brotherly 
feeling. The most encouraging thing I have 
seen lately is an experiment in one of our cit- 
ies. In the thick of the town the ladies of 
the city have furnished and opened a reading- 



134 RELATION OF LITKKATURK TO IJFE 

i\)om, se^Ying*-room, conversation - room, or 
what not, whei*o young* girls, who work for a 
living and have no opportunity for any oult- 
ui\\ at homo or olsowhoiw may spend their 
evenings. They meet thei\3 always some of 
the ladies I have spoken of, whose unosten- 
tatious duty and pleasure it is to pass the 
evening with them, in reading or music or 
the use of the needle, and the exchange of 
the courtesies of life in conversation. AVhat- 
ever grace and kindness iuid retinement of 
manner they c^irry thei\>, I do not suppose 
are wasted. These aix) some of the ways in 
which culture can serve men. And I talve 
it that one of the chief evidences of our prog- 
ress in this century is the I'ecognition of the 
ti'uth that there is no selllshness so supreme 
— not even that in the possession of wealth — 
as that which iH>tires into itself with all the 
accomplishments of liberal learning and raiv 
opportunities, and looks upon the intellectual 
poverty of the world without a wish to i*elievo 
it. "'^ As often as I have been among men," 
says Seneca, '* I have ivturned less a man." 
And Thomas a Kempis dec^Iared that ** the 
greatest saints avoided the company of men 
as much as they could, and chose to live to 
God in secret.'' The Christian pliilosophy 



WHAT 18 YOUR CULTURE TO ME? 125 

was no improvement upon tlic pagan in this 
respect, and was exactly at variance with the 
teachin^^ and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The American scholar cannot alTord to 
live for himself, nor merely for scholarship 
and the delights of learning. He must make 
himself more felt in the material life of this 
country. I am aware that it is said that the 
culture of the age is itself materialistic, and 
that its refmements are sensual; that there is 
little to choose between the coarse excesses 
of poverty and the polished and more deco- 
rous animality of the more fortunate. With- 
out entering directly upon the consideration 
of this much-talked-of tendency, I should like 
to notice the influence upon our present and 
probable future of the bounty, fertility, and 
extraordinary opportunities of this still new 
land. 

The American grows and develops himself 
with few restraints. Foreigners used to de- 
scribe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, 
gaunt, inquisitive, inventive, restless, and cer- 
tain to shrivel into physical inferiority in 
his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. 
The apprehension is not well founded. It is 
quieted by his achievements the continent 
over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in 



r^ l^ilLATlON OF LITKlwVTVlvK IV I JFK 

Avivr and in tho nu^st ditVicult explorations, his 
t\^^i$tauoo of the intUiouoo of givat oitios tow- 
ai\i$ otToniinaov and loss of physical vigor. 
If over man took largv and oai^^r hold of 
earthly thinij:s and appivpriated tlieni to his 
own nso, it is the American. We are gross 
oatoi's, Avo aiv groat drinkers. AVe shall ex- 
cel the English when we have as long pn\o 
tice :\s they. I am tilled witli a kind of 
dismay when 1 see the great stock-yanis of 
Chicago and Cincinnati, thivngh which tlow 
the vast hervls and dtwes of the prairies, 
marching strj\ight down the throi\ts of Eastern 
people. Thonsands are ahNii^^s sowing and 
nwping and br^nving and distilling, to slake 
the immortal thirst of the conntry. AVe t^\ke, 
indeeil, strong hold of the earth ; we al^orb 
its fatness. AVhen Leicester entertained Eliz- 
alvth at Kenilworth, the clock in the greiit 
tower was set perpetnally at twelve, the honr 
of feasting. It is always dinner - time in 
America. 1 do not know how nmch land it 
t^es to raise an average citiien, but I should 
say a quarter section. He spreads himself 
abroi\d, he riots in abundance : above all 
things he must have prv.^fusion, and he wants 
things that i\re solid and strong. 

i>u the Sonvntino promontory, and on tho 



WHAT IH YOU It (UJI/rUIMC TO MIO? 127 

island of Capri, tlio liardy husbandman and 
(isliorman draws liis subsistonco from the soa 
and froni a scant ])at(5li of <^r()un(l. Ono mny 
I'c^ast on a fish and a handful of oliv(3S. Tho 
dinner of tho laborer is a dish of pohmta, a 
k)\v ligs, somo choose, a glass of thin wino. 
J lis wants are few and (easily supplied. He is 
not ov(5i'f(;d, his diet is not stimulating; I 
shouhl say that he would ])ay little to tho 
physic/ian, that familiar of other countries 
whose family olllce is to counteract the elfects 
of ovor-eating. lie is temperate, frugal, con- 
tent, and apparently draws not more of liis 
lifo from the (uirtli or tho sea than from tho 
gonial sky. Jle would never build a i*aciiic 
Hail way, nor writo a hundred volumes of com- 
mentary on the Scriptures ; but he is an exam- 
ple of how little a man actually needs of tho 
gross products of tho earth. 

I suj)p()so that life was never fuller in cer- 
tain ways than it is hero in America. If a 
civilization is judged by its wants, wo are cer- 
tainly highly civilized. Wo cannot get land 
enough, nor clothes enough, nor houses enough, 
nor food enough. A IJedouin tribe would 
fare sumptuously on what one American fam- 
ily consumes and wastes. Tho revenue re- 
quired for the wardrobe of one woman of fash- 



128 KELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

ion would suffice to convert the inhabitants of 
I know not how many square miles in Africa. 
It absorbs the income of a province to bring 
up a baby. "We riot in prodigality, we vie 
with each other in material accumulation and 
expense. Our thoughts are mainly on how to 
increase the products of the world, and get 
them into our own possession. 

I think this gross material tendency is 
strong in America, and more likely to get the 
master}^ over the spiritual and the intellectual 
here than elsewhere, because of our exhaust- 
less resources. Let us not mistake the nature 
of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it 
because we can convert crude iron into the 
most delicate mechanism, or transport our- 
selves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall 
refine our carnal tastes so as to be satisfied at 
dinner with the tongues of ortolans and the 
breasts of singing-birds. 

Plato banished the musicians from his feasts 
because he would not have the charms of con- 
versation interfered with. By comparison, 
music was to him a sensuous enjoyment. In 
any society the ideal must be the banishment 
of the more sensuous; the refinement of it 
will only repeat the continued experiment of 
history — the end of a civilization in a polished 



WHAT IS TOUR CULTURE TO ME? 129 

materialism, and its speedy fall from that into 
grossness. 

I am sure that the scholar, trained to 
" plain living and high thinking," knows that 
the prosperous life consists in the culture of 
the man, and not in the refinement and accu- 
mulation of the material. The word culture 
is often used to signify that dainty intellectu- 
alism which is merely a sensuous pampering of 
the mind, as distinguishable from the healthy 
training of the mind as is the education of the 
body in athletic exercises from the petting of 
it by luxurious baths and unguents. Culture is 
the blossom of knowledge, but it is a fruit 
blossom, the ornament of the age but the seed 
of the future. The so-called culture, a mere 
fastidiousness of taste, is a barren flower. 

You would expect spurious culture to stand 
aloof from common life, as it does, to extend 
its charities at the end of a pole, to make of 
religion a mere cultus, to construct for its 
heaven a sort of Paris, where all the inhabi- 
tants dress becomingly, and where there are 
no Communists. Culture, like fine manners, 
is not always the result of wealth or position. 
When monseigneur the archbishop makes his 
rare tour through the Swiss mountains, the 
simple peasants do not crowd upon him 



130 RELATION OF UTEKATUEE TO UKE 

with boorish impudence, but strew his stony- 
path with flowers, and receive him with joy- 
ous but modest sincerity. When the Kussian 
prince made his landing in America the de- 
termined staring of a bevy of accomplished 
American women nearly swept the young 
man off the deck of the vessel. One cannot 
but respect that tremulous sensitiveness which 
caused the maiden lady to shrink from staring 
at the moon when she heard there was a man 
in it. 

The materialistic drift of this age — that is, 
its devotion to material development — is fre- 
quently deplored. I suppose it is like all 
other ages in that respect, but there appears 
to be a more determined demand for change 
of condition than ever before, and a deeper 
movement for equalization. Here in America 
this is, in great part, a movement for merely 
physical or material equalization. The idea 
seems to be wellnigh universal that the millen- 
nium is to come by a great deal less work and 
a great deal more pay. It seems to me that 
the millennium is to come by an infusion into 
all society of a truer culture, which is neither 
of poverty nor of wealth, but is the beautiful 
fruit of the development of the higher part of 
man's nature. 



WHAT IS TOUE CULTURE TO ME? 131 

And the thought I wish to leave with you, 
as scholars and men who can command the 
best culture, is that it is all needed to shape and 
control the strong growth of material develop- 
ment here, to guide the blind instincts of the 
mass of men who are struggling for a freer 
place and a breath of fresh air ; that you can- 
not stand aloof in a class isolation ; that your 
power is in a personal sympathy with the hu- 
manity which is ignorant but discontented ; 
and that the question which the man with the 
spade asks about the use of your culture to 
him is a menace. 

(1872.) 



MODERN FICTION 



MODERN FICTION 

One of tho worst characteristics of modern 
fiction is its so-called truth to nature. For 
fiction is an art, as paintiiif^ is, as sculpture is, 
as acting is. A photograph of a natural object 
is not art ; nor is the phister cast of a man's 
face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of an 
actual occurrence. Art requires an idealiza- 
tion of nature. The amateur, though she may 
bo a lady, who attempts to represent upon the 
stage the lady of tho drawing-room, usually 
fails to convey to the spectators the impression 
of a lady. She lacks the art by which the 
trained actress, who may not be a lady, suc- 
ceeds. The actual transfer to the stage of the 
drawing-room and its occupants, with the be- 
havior common in well-bred society, would no 
doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and 
the spectators would declare the representa- 
tion unnatural. 

However our jargon of criticism may con- 
found terms, we do not need to be reminded 



136 EELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

that art and nature are distinct; that art, 
though dependent on nature, is a separate 
creation ; that art is selection and idealization, 
with a view to impressing the mind with 
human, or even higher than human, senti- 
ments and ideas. We may not agree whether 
the perfect man and woman ever existed, but 
we do know that the highest representations 
of them in form — that in the old Greek sculpt- 
ures — were the result of artistic selection of 
parts of many living figures. 

When we praise our recent fiction for its 
photographic fidelity to nature we condemn 
it, for we deny to it the art which would give 
it value. We forget that the creation of the 
novel should be, to a certain extent, a syn- 
thetic process, and impart to human actions 
that ideal quality which we demand in paint- 
ing. Heine regards Cervantes as the origi- 
nator of the modern novel. The older novels 
sprang from the poetry of the Middle Ages ; 
their themes were knightly adventure, their 
personages were the nobility ; the common peo- 
ple did not figure in them. These romances, 
which had degenerated into absurdities, Cer- 
vantes overthrew by Don Quixote. But in put- 
ting an end to the old romances he created 
a new school of fiction, called the modern 



MODERN FICTION 137 

novel, by introducing into his romance of 
pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of 
the lower classes, and intermingling the phases 
of popular life. But he had no one-sided ten- 
dency to portray the vulgar only ; he brought 
together the higher and the lower in society, 
to serve as light and shade, and the aristo- 
cratic element was as prominent as the popu- 
lar. This noble and chivalrous element dis- 
appears in the novels of the English who imi- 
tated Cervantes. "These English novelists 
since Eichardson's reign," says Heine, "are 
prosaic natures ; to the prudish spirit of their 
time even pithy descriptions of the life of the 
common people are repugnant, and we see on 
yonder side of the Channel those lourgeoisie 
novels arise, wherein the petty humdrum life 
of the middle classes is depicted." But Scott 
appeared, and effected a restoration of the 
balance in fiction. As Cervantes had intro- 
duced the democratic element into romances, 
so Scott replaced the aristocratic element, 
when it had disappeared, and only a prosaic, 
lourgeoisie fiction existed. He restored to 
romances the symmetry which we admire in 
Don Quixote. The characteristic feature of 
Scott's historical romances, in the opinion of 
the great German critic, is the harmony be- 



138 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

tween the aristocratic and democratic ele- 
ments. 

This is true, but is it the last analysis of the 
subject? Is it a sufficient account of the 
genius of Cervantes and Scott that they com- 
bined in their romances a representation of 
the higher and lower classes? Is it not of 
more importance how they represented them ? 
It is only a part of the achievement of Cer- 
vantes that he introduced the common people 
into fiction ; it is his higher glory that he 
idealized this material; and it is Scott's dis- 
tinction also that he elevated into artistic 
creations both nobility and commonalty. In 
short, the essential of fiction is not diversity 
of social life, but artistic treatment of what- 
ever is depicted. The novel may deal wholly 
with an aristocracy, or wholly with another 
class, but it must idealize the nature it touches 
into art. The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, 
of which Heine complains, is not that they 
treated of one class only, and excluded a 
higher social range, but that they treated it 
without art and without ideality. In nature 
there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in 
human life there is nothing uninteresting to 
the artist ; but nature and human life, for the 
purposes of fiction, need a creative genius. 



MODEEN FICTION 139 

The importation into the novel of the vulgar, 
sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbear- 
able, unless genius first fuses the raw material 
in its alembic. 

When, therefore, we say that one of the 
worst characteristics of modern fiction is its 
so-called truth to nature, we mean that it dis- 
regards the higher laws of art, and attempts 
to give us unidealized pictures of life. The 
failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, 
but that the treatment is vulgar; not that 
common life is treated, but that the treatment 
is common ; not that care is taken with details, 
but that no selection is made, and everything 
is photographed regardless of its artistic value. 
I am sure that no one ever felt any repug- 
nance on being introduced by Cervantes to 
the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and 
serving-maids, and idle vagabonds of Spain, any 
more than to an acquaintance with the beggar- 
boys and street gamins on the canvases of 
Murillo. And I believe that the philosophic 
reason of the disgust of Heine and of every 
critic with the English hourgeoisie novels, 
describing the petty, humdrum life of the 
middle classes, was simply the want of art in 
the writers ; the failure on their part to see 
that a literal transcript of nature is poor stuff 



140 RELATION OF LITEEATUBE TO LIFE 

in literature. "We do not need to go back to 
Eichardson's time for illustrations of that 
truth. Every week the English press — which 
is even a greater sinner in this respect than 
the American — turns out a score of novels 
which are mediocre, not from their subjects, 
but from their utter lack of the artistic qual- 
ity. It matters not whether they treat of 
middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of draw- 
ing-room life and lords and ladies ; they are 
equally flat and dreary. Perhaps the most 
inane thing ever put forth in the name of lit- 
erature is the so-called domestic novel, an in- 
digestible, culinary sort of product, that might 
be named the doughnut of fiction. The usual 
apology for it is that it depicts famil}'- life with 
fidelity. Its characters are supposed to act 
and talk as people act and talk at home and 
in society. I trust this is a libel, but, for the 
sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was 
ever produced so insipid a result ? They are 
called moral ; in the higher sense they are im- 
moral, for they tend to lower the moral tone 
and stamina of every reader. It needs genius 
to import into literature ordinary conversa- 
tion, petty domestic details, and the common- 
place and vulgar phases of life. A report of 
ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in 



MODERN FICTIOIT 141 

domestic novels, may be true to nature ; if it 
is, it is not worth writing or worth reading. 
I cannot see that it serves any good purpose 
whatever. Fortunately, we have in our day 
illustrations of a different treatment of the 
vulgar. I do not know any more truly real- 
istic pictures of certain aspects of l^ew Eng- 
land life than are to be found in Judd's Mar- 
garet^ wherein are depicted exceedingly pinched 
and ignoble social conditions. Yet the char- 
acters and the life are drawn with the artistic 
purity of Flaxman's illustrations of Homer. 
Another example is Thomas Hardy's Far from 
the Madding Crowd. Every character in it is 
of the lower class in England. But what an 
exquisite creation it is! You have to turn 
back to Shakespeare for any talk of peasants 
and clowns and shepherds to compare with 
the conversations in this novel, so racy are they 
of the soil, and yet so touched with the finest 
art, the enduring art. Here is not the realism 
of the photograph, but of the artist ; that is to 
say, it is nature idealized. 

"When we criticise our recent fiction, it is 
obvious that w^e ought to remember that it 
only conforms to the tendencies of our social 
life, our prevailing ethics, and to the art con- 
ditions of our time. Literature is never in 



142 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

any age an isolated product. It is closely re- 
lated to the development or retrogression of 
the time in all departments of life. The lit- 
erary production of our day seems, and no 
doubt is, more various than that of any other, 
and it is not easy to fix upon its leading ten- 
dency. It is claimed for its fiction, however, 
that it is analytic and realistic, and that much 
of it has certain other qualities that make it a 
new school in art. These aspects of it I wish 
to consider in this paper. 

It is scarcely possible to touch upon our re- 
cent fiction, any more than upon our recent 
poetry, without taking into account what is 
caUed the Esthetic movement — a movement 
more prominent in England than elsewhere. 
A slight contemplation of this reveals its re- 
semblance to the Komantic movement in Ger- 
many, of which the brothers Schlegel were 
apostles, in the latter part of the last century. 
The movements are alike in this : that they 
both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in 
feudalism, in the symbols of a Christianity 
that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictly 
pre-Eaphael art which was supposed to be the 
result of a simple faith. In the one case, the 
artless and childlike remains of old German 
pictures and statuary were exhumed and set 



MODERN FICTION 143 

up as worthy of imitation ; in the other, we 
have carried out in art, in costume, and in do- 
mestic hfe, so far as possible, what has been 
wittily and accurately described as "stained- 
glass attitudes." With all its peculiar vaga- 
ries, the English school is essentially a copy 
of the German, in its return to mediaevalism. 
The two movements have a further Hkeness, in 
that they are found accompanied by a highly 
symbolized religious revival. English aBstheti- 
cism would probably disown any religious in- 
tention, although it has been accused of a re- 
fined interest in Pan and Yenus ; but in all its 
feudal sympathies it goes along with the re- 
ligious art and vestment revival, the return to 
symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, and sis- 
terhoods. Years ago, an acute writer in the 
Catholic World claimed Dante Gabriel Eossetti 
as a Catholic writer, from the internal evi- 
dence of his poems. The German Eomanti- 
cism, which was fostered by the Romish priest- 
hood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bos- 
om of the Roman Catholic Church. It will be 
interesting to note in what ritualistic harbor 
the aestheticism of our day will finally moor. 
That two similar revivals should come so near 
together in time makes us feel that the world 
moves onward — if it does move onward — in cir- 



144 RELATION OF LITEEATUKE TO LIFE 

cular figures of very short radii. There seems 
to be only one thing certain in our Christian 
era, and that is a periodic return to classic 
models; the only stable standards of resort 
seem to be Greek art and literature. 

The characteristics which are prominent, 
when we think of our recent fiction, are a 
wholly unidealized view of human society, 
which has got the name of realism ; a delight 
in representing the worst phases of social life ; 
an extreme analysis of persons and motives ; 
the sacrifice of action to psychological study ; 
the substitution of studies of character for 
anything like a story ; a notion that it is not 
artistic, and that it is untrue to nature to bring 
any novel to a definite consummation, and 
especially to end it happily ; and a despondent 
tone about society, politics, and the whole drift 
of modern life. Judged by our fiction, we are 
in an irredeemably bad way. There is little 
beauty, joy, or light -heartedness in living; 
the spontaneity and charm of life are analyzed 
out of existence; sweet girls, made to love 
and be loved, are extinct ; melancholy Jaques 
never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden, 
and if he sees her in the drawing-room he 
poisons his pleasure with the thought that 
she is scheming and artificial; there are no 



MODERN FICTION 145 

happy marriages — indeed, marriage itself is 
almost too inartistic to be permitted by our 
novelists, unless it can be supplemented by a 
divorce, and art is supposed to deny any bappy 
consummation of true love. In short, modern 
society is going to the dogs, notwithstanding 
money is only three and a half per cent. It 
is a gloomy business life, at the best. Two 
learned but despondent university professors 
met, not long ago, at an afternoon "coffee," 
and drew sympathetically together in a corner. 
"What a world this would be," said one, 
" without coifee !" " Yes," replied the other, 
stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect 
— " yes ; but what a hell of a world it is with 
coffee !" 

The analytic method in fiction is interesting, 
when used by a master of dissection, but it has 
this fatal defect in a novel — it destroys illu- 
sion. We want to think that the characters 
in a story are real persons. We cannot do 
this if we see the author set them up as if they 
were marionettes, and take them to pieces 
every few pages, and show their interior 
structure, and the machinery by which they 
are moved. Not only is the illusion gone, but 
the movement of the story, if there is a story, 
is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment 



146 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

in impatience and weariness. You find your- 
self saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellow 
the author is ! What an ingenious creation 
this character is ! How brightly the author 
makes his people talk ! This is high praise, 
but by no means the highest, and when we re- 
flect we see how immeasurably inferior, in 
fiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic. 
In the dramatic method the characters appear, 
and show what they are by what they do and 
say; the reader studies their motives, and a 
part of his enjoyment is in analyzing them, 
and his vanity is flattered by the trust reposed 
in his perspicacity. "We realize how unneces- 
sary minute analysis of character and long 
descriptions are in reading a drama by Shake- 
speare, in which the characters are so vividly 
presented to us in action and speech, without 
the least interference of the author in descrip- 
tion, that we regard them as persons with 
whom we might have real relations, and not 
as bundles of traits and qualities. True, the 
conditions of dramatic art and the art of the 
novel are different, in that the drama can dis- 
pense with delineations, for its characters are 
intended to be presented to the eye ; but all 
the same, a good drama will explain itself 
without the aid of actors, and there is no 



MODERN FICTION 147 

doubt that it is the higher art in the novel, 
when once the characters are introduced, to 
treat them dramatically, and let them work 
out their own destiny according to their char- 
acters. It is a truism to say that when the 
reader perceives that the author can compel 
his characters to do what he pleases all inter- 
est in them as real persons is gone. In a novel 
of mere action and adventure, a lower order of 
fiction, where all the interest centres in the 
unravelling of a plot, of course this does not so 
much matter. 

Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused my- 
self in looking up some of the localities made 
famous in Scott's romances, which are as real 
in the mind as any historical places. After- 
wards I read The Heart of Midlothian. I was 
surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was 
inferior to my recollection of it. Its style is 
open to the charge of prolixity,, and even of 
slovenliness in some parts; and it does not 
move on with increasing momentum and con- 
centration to a climax, as many of Scott's nov- 
els do ; the story drags along in the disposi- 
tion of one character after another. Yet, when 
I had finished the book and put it away, a 
singular thing happened. It suddenly came 
to me that in readino^ it I had not once 



148 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

thought of Scott as the maker ; it had never 
occurred to me that he had created the people 
in whose fortunes I had been so intensely ab- 
sorbed ; and I never once had felt how clever 
the novelist was in the naturally dramatic dia- 
logues of the characters. In short, it had not 
entered my mind to doubt the existence of 
Jeanie and Effie Deans, and their father, and 
Eeuben Butler, and the others, who seem as 
real as historical persons in Scotch history. 
And when I came to think of it afterwards, 
reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern 
realistic school, I found that some scenes, nota- 
bly the night attack on the old Tolbooth, were 
as real to me as if I had read them in a police 
report of a newspaper of the day. Was Scott, 
then, only a reporter? Far from it, as you 
would speedily see if he had thrown into the 
novel a police report of the occurrences at 
the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its 
irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient 
points, given events their proper perspective, 
and the whole picture due light and shade. 

The sacrifice of action to some extent to 
psychological evolution in modern fiction may 
be an advance in the art as an intellectual en- 
tertainment, if the writer does not make that 
evolution his end, and does not forget that the 



MODERN FICTION 149 

indispensable thing in a novel is the story. 
The novel of mere adventure or mere plot, it 
need not be urged, is of a lower order than 
that in Avhich the evolution of characters and 
their interaction make the story. The highest 
fiction is that which embodies both ; that is, 
the story in which action is the result of 
mental and spiritual forces in play. And we 
protest against the notion that the novel of 
the future is to be, or should be, merely a study 
of, or an essay or a series of analytic essays 
on, certain phases of social life. 

It is not true that civilization or cultivation 
ha^ bred out of the world the liking for a story. 
In this the most highly educated Londoner and 
the Egyptian felUih meet on common human 
ground. The passion for a story has no more 
died out than curiosity, or than the passion of 
love. The truth is not that stories are not 
demanded, but that the born racmiteicr and 
story-teller is a rare person. The faculty of 
telling a story is a much rarer gift than the 
ability to analyze character, and even than the 
ability truly to draw character. It may be a 
higher or a lower power, but it is rarer. It is 
a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of 
culture can attain it, any more than learning 
can make a poet. Nor is the complaint well 



150 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

founded that the stories have all been told, the 
possible plots all been used, and the combina- 
tions of circumstances exhausted. It is no 
doubt our individual experience that we hear 
almost every day — and we hear nothing so 
eagerly — some new story, better or worse, but 
new in its exhibition of human character, and 
in the combination of events. And the strange, 
eventful histories of human life will no more 
be exhausted than the possible arrangements 
of mathematical numbers. We might as well 
say that there are no more good pictures to be 
painted as that there are no more good stories 
to be told. 

Equally baseless is the assumption that it is 
inartistic and untrue to nature to bring a novel 
to a definite consummation, and especially to 
end it happily. Life, we are told, is full of in- 
completion, of broken destinies, of failures, of 
romances that begin but do not end, of ambi- 
tions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, 
of unhappy issues, or a resultless play of in- 
fluences. Well, but life is full, also, of endings, 
of the results in concrete action of character, 
of completed dramas. And we expect and 
give, in the stories we hear and tell in ordinary 
intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end 
of some sort. If you interest me in the prepara- 



MODERN FICTION 151 

tions of two persons who are starting on a 
journey, and expend all your ingenuity in de- 
scribing their outfit and their characters, and 
do not tell me where they went or what befell 
them afterwards, I do not call that a story. 
Nor am I any better satisfied when you de- 
scribe two persons whom you know, whose 
characters are interesting, and who become in- 
volved in all manner of entanglements, and 
then stop your narration ; and when I ask, say 
you have not the least idea whether they got 
out of their difBculties, or what became of them. 
In real life we do not call that a story where 
everything is left unconcluded and in the air. 
In point of fact, romances are daily beginning 
and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our 
observation. 

Should they always end weU in the novel ? 
I am very far from saying that. Tragedy and 
the pathos of failure have their places in liter- 
ature as well as in life. I only say that, artis- 
tically, a good ending is as proper as a bad 
ending. Yet the main object of the novel is to 
entertain, and the best entertainment is that 
which lifts the imagination and quickens the 
spirit ; to lighten the burdens of life by taking 
us for a time out of our humdrum and perhaps 
sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar 



152 KELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

life somewhat idealized, and probably see it all 
the more truly from an artistic point of view. 
For the majority of the race, in its hard lines, 
fiction is an inestimable boon. Incidentally 
the novel may teach, encourage, refine, elevate. 
Even for these purposes, that novel is the best 
which shows us the best possibilities of our 
lives — the novel which gives hope and cheer 
instead of discouragement and gloom. Famil- 
iarity with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low 
entertainment, and of doubtful moral value, 
and their introduction is unbearable if it is not 
done with the idealizing touch of the artist. 

Do not misunderstand me to mean that com- 
mon and low life are not fit subjects of fiction, 
or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist, 
or that the evils of a social state are never to 
be exposed in the novel. For this, also, is an 
office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold 
the mirror up to nature, and to human nature 
as it exhibits itself. But when the mirror 
shows nothing but vice and social disorder, 
leaving out the saving qualities that keep soci- 
ety on the whole, and family life as a rule, as 
sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not 
held up to nature, but more likely reflects a 
morbid mind. Still it must be added that the 
study of unfortunate social conditions is a legit- 



MODEEN FICTION 153 

imate one for the author to make ; and that 
we may be in no state to judge justly of his 
exposure while the punishment is being in- 
flicted, or while the irritation is fresh. For, 
no doubt, the reader winces often because the 
novel reveals to himself certain possible base- 
ness, selfishness, and meanness. Of this, how- 
ever, I (speaking for myself) may be sure : that 
the artist who so represents vulgar life that I 
am more in love with my kind, the satirist who 
so depicts vice and villany that I am strength- 
ened in my moral fibre, has vindicated his 
choice of material. On the contrary, those 
novelists are not justified whose forte it seems 
to be to so set forth goodness as to make it un- 
attractive. 

But we come back to the general proposition 
that the indispensable condition of the novel 
is that it shall entertain. And for this purpose 
the world is not ashamed to own that it wants, 
and always will want, a story — a story that 
has an ending ; and if not a good ending, then 
one that in noble tragedy lifts up our nature 
into a high plane of sacrifice and pathos. In 
proof of this we have only to refer to the 
masterpieces of fiction which the world cher- 
ishes and loves to recur to. 

I confess that I am harassed with the incom- 



154 RELATION OF LITEEATTJEE TO LIFE 

plete romances, that leave me, when the book 
is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at 
midnight, abandoned by his conductor, and 
without a lantern. I am tired of accompany- 
ing people for hours through disaster and per- 
plexity and misunderstanding, only to see them 
lost in a thick mist at last. I am weary of 
going to funerals, w^hich are not my funerals, 
however chatty and amusing the undertaker 
may be. I confess that I should like to see 
again the lovely heroine, the sweet woman, 
capable of a great passion and a great sacrifice ; 
and I do not object if the novelist tries her to 
the verge of endurance, in agonies of mind and 
in perils, subjecting her to Avasting sicknesses 
even, if he onl}^ brings her out at the end in a 
blissful compensation of her troubles, and en- 
dued w^ith a new and sweeter charm. No 
doubt it is better for us all, and better art, 
that in the novel of society the destiny should 
be decided by character. What an artistic and 
righteous consummation it is when we meet 
the shrewd and wicked old Baroness Bernstein 
at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that 
there was no other logical end for the worldly 
and fascinating Beatrix of Henr}^ Esmond ! It 
is one of the great privileges of fiction to right 
the wrongs of life, to do justice to the deserv- 



MODERN FICTION 155 

ing and the vicious. It is Avholesome for us to 
contemplate tlie justice, even if we do not often 
see it in society. It is true that hypocrisy and 
vulgar self-seeking often succeed in life, occupy- 
ing high places, and make their exit in the 
pageantry of honored obsequies. Yet always 
the man is conscious of the hoUowness of his 
triumph, and the w^orld takes a pretty accu- 
rate measure of it. It is the privilege of the 
novelist, without introducing into such a 
career what is called disaster, to satisfy our 
innate love of justice by letting us see the true 
nature of such prosperity. The unscrupulous 
man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splen- 
dor, and dies in the odor of respectability. 
His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has 
wronged and defrauded, lives in misery, and 
dies in disappointment and penury. The novel- 
ist cannot reverse the facts Avithout such a 
shock to our experience as shall destroy for us 
the artistic value of his fiction, and bring upon 
his work the deserved reproach of indiscrimi- 
nately " rewarding the good and punishing the 
bad." But we have a right to ask that he 
shall reveal the real heart and character of 
this passing show of life; for not to do this, to 
content himself merely with exterior appear- 
ances, is for the majority of his readers to 



150 KELATION OF IJTKUATUKE TO LIFE 

clTaoe the linos botwoon virtuo and vice. And 
Avo ask this not for the sake of the moral 
lesson, but because not to do it is, to our deep 
consciousness, inartistic and untrue to o\u* judg- 
ment of Ufe as it goes on. Thackeray used to 
say that all his talent "vvas in his eyes; meaning 
that he was only an observer and reporter of 
what he saw, and not a rrovidence to rectify 
human alTaii-s. The givat artist undervalued 
his genius. He reporteii what he saw as 
Eaphael and "Murillo reported what they saw. 
AYith his touch of genius he assigned to every- 
thing its true value, moving us to tenderness, 
to pity, to scorn, to righteous indignation, to 
sympathy with humanity. I lind in him the 
highest art, and not that inditTerence to the 
great facts and deep curi^nts and destinies of 
human life, that want of enthusiasm and sym- 
path}', Avhich has got the name of " art for art's 
sake," Literary fiction is a barren pixxiuct if 
it wants sympathy and love for men. ** Art for 
art's Siike " is a good and defensible phrase, if 
our definition of art includes tlie idciU, and not 
otherwise. 

1 do not know how it has come about that in 
so large a pivportion of recent fiction it is held 
to be artistic to look almost altog-ether upon 
the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to 



MODIOKN FICTION 157 

this view tho ruiino of *' rojilisiii"; to select 
tlio (lisiigrociiblo, the vicious, tho unwhole- 
some ; to give us for our companions, in our 
liours of leisure and relaxation, only the silly 
and the weak-minded woman, the fast and 
slangy girl, the iiiingante and tho "shady" — 
to borrow the language of tho society she 
seeks — tho hero of irresolution, the prig, tho 
vulgar, and the vicious ; to serve us only with 
the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of 
the gay, the gilded riilralf of our social state ; 
to drag us forever along the dizzy, half-fract- 
ured precipice of the seventh commandment ; 
to bring us into relations only with the sordid 
and tho common ; to force us to sup with un- 
wholesome company on misery and scnsuous- 
ness, in tales so utterly unpleasant that we are 
ready to welcome any disaster as a relief ; and 
then — the latest and finest touch of modern 
art — to leave the whole weltering mass in a 
chaos, without conclusion and without possible 
issue. 

And this is called a picture of real life ! 
Heavens ! Is it true that in England, w^here a 
great proportion of the fiction we describe and 
loathe is produced ; is it true that in our New 
England society there is nothing but frivolity, 
sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble 



158 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

ambition and ignoble living? Is there no 
charm in social life — no self-sacrifice, devo- 
tion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, 
and live above them? Are there no noble 
vromen, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the 
grace that all the world loves, albeit with the 
feminine weaknesses that make all the world 
hope ? Is there no manliness left ? Are there 
no homes where the tempter does not live 
with the tempted in a mush of sentimental 
afiinity? Or is it, in fact, more artistic to 
ignore all these, and paint only the feeble and 
the repulsive in our social state ? The feeble, 
the sordid, and the repulsive in our social 
state nobody denies, nor does anybody deny 
the exceeding cleverness with which our social 
disorders are reproduced in fiction by a few 
masters of their art ; but is it not time that it 
should be considered good art to show some- 
thing of the clean and bright side ? 

This is pre-eminently the age of the novel. 
The development of variety of fiction since 
the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious. 
The prejudice against novel-reading is quite 
broken down, since fiction has taken all fields 
for its province; everybody reads novels. 
Three-quarters of the books taken from the 
circulating library are stories ; they make up 



MODERN FICTION 159 

half the library of the Sunday-schools. If a 
writer has anything to say, or thinks he has, 
he knows that he can most certainly reach 
the ear of the public by the medium of a 
story. So we have novels for children ; nov- 
els religious, scientific, historical, archaeolog- 
ical, psychological, pathological, total -absti- 
nence ; novels of travel, of adventure and ex- 
ploration ; novels domestic, and the perpetual 
spawn of books called novels of society. Not 
only is everything turned into a story, real or 
so called, but there must be a story in every- 
thing. The stump-speaker holds his audience 
by well-worn stories ; the preacher wakes up 
his congregation by a graphic narrative ; and 
the Sunday-school teacher leads his children 
into all goodness by the entertaining path of 
romance ; we even had a President who gov- 
erned the country nearly by anecdotes. 

The result of this universal demand for fic- 
tion is necessarily an enormous supply, and as 
everybody writes, without reference to gifts, 
the product is mainly trash, and trash of a 
deleterious sort ; for bad art in literature is 
bad morals. I am not sure but the so-called 
domestic, the diluted, the "goody," namby- 
pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely 
read by school-girls, young ladies, and women, 



160 KELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

do more harm than the "knowing," auda- 
cious, wicked ones, also, it is reported, read by 
them, and written largely by their own sex. 
For minds enfeebled and relaxed by stories 
lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor 
condition to meet the perils of life. This is 
not the place for discussing the stories written 
for the young and for the Sunday-school. It 
seems impossible to check the flow of them, 
now that so much capital is invested in this 
industry ; but I think that healthy public sen- 
timent is beginning to recognize the truth 
that the excessive reading of this class of 
literature by the young is weakening to the 
mind, besides being a serious hinderance to 
study and to attention to the literature that 
has substance. 

In his account of the Komantic School in 
Germany, Heine says, "In the breast of a 
nation's authors there always lies the image 
of its future, and the critic who, with a knife 
of sufl3.cient keenness, dissects a new poet can 
easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sac- 
rificial animal, what shape matters will as- 
sume in Germany." E'ow if all the poets and 
novelists of England and America to-day were 
cut up into little pieces (and we might sacri- 
fice a few for the sake of the experiment), 



MODEEN FICTION 161 

there is no inspecting augur who could divine 
therefrom our literary future. The diverse 
indications would puzzle the most acute dis- 
sector. Lost in the variety, the multiplicity 
of minute details, the refinements of analysis 
and introspection, he would miss any leading 
indications. For with all its variet}^, it seems 
to me that one characteristic of recent fiction 
is its narrowness — narrowness of vision and 
of treatment. It deals with lives rather than 
with life. Lacking ideality, it fails of broad 
perception. We are accustomed to think that 
with the advent of the genuine novel of so- 
ciety, in the first part of this century, a great 
step forward was taken in fiction. And so 
there was. If the artist did not use a big 
canvas, he adopted a broad treatment. But 
the tendency now is to push analysis of indi- 
vidual peculiarities to an extreme, and to sub- 
stitute a study of traits for a representation of 
human life. 

It scarcely need be said that it is not multi- 
tude of figures on a literary canvas that se- 
cures breadth of treatment. The novel may 
be narrow, though it swarms with a hundred 
personages. It may be as wide as life, as 
high as imagination can lift itself; it may 
image to us a whole social state, though it 



163 KELATION OF LITERATURE TO IJFE 

puts in motion no more persons than ^ye made 
the acquaintance of in one of the romances 
of Hawthorne. Consider for a moment how 
Thackeray produced his marvellous results. 
We follow with him, in one of his novels of 
society, the fortunes of a very few people. 
The}^ are so vividly portrayed that we are 
convinced the author must have known them 
in that great world with whicli he was so fa- 
miliar; we should not be surprised to meet 
any of them in the streets of London. AYhen 
we visit the Charterhouse School, and see the 
old forms where the boys sat nearly a century 
ago, we have in our minds Colonel Xewcome 
as really as we have Charles Lamb and Cole- 
ridge and De Quincey. "We are absorbed, as 
we read, in the evolution of the characters of 
perhaps only half a dozen people ; and yet all 
the world, all great, roaring, struggling Lon- 
don, is in the story, and Clive, and Philip, and 
Ethel, and Beck}^ Sharpe, and Captain Costi- 
gan are a part of life. It is the flowery month 
of May ; the scent of the hawthorn is in the 
air, and the tender flush of the new spring 
suffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion 
and pleasure and idleness surges up and down 
— the sauntering throng, the splendid equi- 
pages, the endless cavalcade in Kotten Kow, in 



MODERN FICTION 163 

which Clive descries afar off the white plume 
of his lady-love dancing on the waves of an 
unattainable society; the club windows are 
all occupied; Parliament is in session, with 
its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the 
thronged streets roar with life from morn till 
nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum 
and sparkle in the crush of a London season ; 
as you walk the midnight pavement, through 
the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes 
the burst of bacchanalian song. Here is the 
world of the press and of letters; here are 
institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, 
glimpses of great ships going to and fro on 
distant seas, of India, of Australia. This one 
book is an epitome of English life, almost of 
the empire itself. We are conscious of all 
this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the 
artist given his little history of half a dozen 
people in this struggling world. 

But this background of a great city, of an 
empire, is not essential to the breadth of treat- 
ment upon which we insist in fiction, to broad 
characterization, to the play of imagination 
about common things which transfigures them 
into the immortal beauty of artistic creations. 
What a simple idyl in itself is Goethe's Iler- 
mcmn and Dorothea ! It is the creation of a 



164 EELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

few master-touches, using only common ma- 
terial. Yet it has in it the breadth of life 
itself, the depth and passion of all our human 
struggle in the world — a little story with a 
vast horizon. 

It is constantly said that the conditions in 
America are unfavorable to the higher fic- 
tion ; that our societ}'- is unformed, without 
centre, without the definition of classes, Avhich 
give the light and shade that Ileine speaks of 
in Don Quixote ; that it lacks types and cus- 
toms that can be widely recognized and ac- 
cepted as national and characteristic; that 
we have no past; that we want both ro- 
mantic and historic background; that we 
are in a shifting, flowing, forming period 
which fiction cannot seize on; that we are 
in diversity and confusion that bafiie artis- 
tic treatment ; in short, that American life 
is too vast, varied, and crude for the purpose 
of the novelist. 

These excuses might be accepted as fully 
accounting for our failure — or shall we say 
our delay ? — if it were not for two or three of 
our literary performances. It is true that no 
novel has been written, and we dare say no 
novel will be written, that is, or will be, an 
epitome of the manifold diversities of Ameri- 



MODEEN FICTION 165 

can life, unless it be in the form of one of 
Walt Whitman's catalogues. But we are not 
without peculiar types; not without charac- 
ters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, 
inequalities; not without the charms of nat- 
ure in infinite variety; and human nature is 
the same here that it is in Spain, France, and 
England. Out of these materials Cooper wrote 
romances, narratives stamped with the distinct 
characteristics of American life and scenery, 
that were and are eagerly read by all civilized 
peoples, and which secured the universal ver- 
dict which only breadth of treatment com- 
mands. Out of these materials, also, Haw- 
thorne, child endowed with a creative imag- 
ination, wove those tragedies of interior life, 
those novels of our provincial New England, 
which rank among the great masterpieces of 
the novelist's art. The master artist can ideal- 
ize even our crude material, and make it 
serve. 

These exceptions to a rule do not go to 
prove the general assertion of a poverty of 
material for fiction here; the simple truth 
probably is that, for reasons incident to the 
development of a new region of the earth, 
creative genius has been turned in other di- 
rections than that of fictitious hterature. Nor 



166 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

do I think tliat we need to take shelter be- 
hind the well-worn and convenient observa- 
tion, the truth of which stands in much doubt, 
that literature is the final flower of a nation's 
civilization. 

However, this is somewhat a digression. 
We are speaking of the tendency of recent 
fiction, very much the same everywhere that 
novels are written, which we have imperfectly 
sketched. It is probably of no more use to 
protest against it than it is to protest against 
the vulgar realism in pictorial art, which holds 
ugliness and beauty in equal esteem ; or against 
aestheticism gone to seed in languid affecta- 
tions; or against the enthusiasm of a social 
life which wreaks its religion on the color of 
a vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over 
an ancient pewter mug. Most of our fiction, 
in its extreme analysis, introspection and self- 
consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its 
disregard of the ideal, in its selection as well 
as in its treatment of nature, is simply of a 
piece with a good deal else that passes for 
genuine art. Much of it is admirable in work- 
manship, and exhibits a cleverness in details 
and a subtlety in the observation of traits 
which many great novels lack. But I should 
be sorry to think that the historian will judge 



MODERN FICTION 167 

our social life by it, and I doubt not that 
most of us are ready for a more ideal, that 
is to say, a more artistic, view of our per- 
formances in this bright and pathetic world, 

(1883.) 



THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY 
MR. FROUDE'S '^^ROGRESS" 



THOUGHTS SUGGESTED KY 
MR. FROUDE'S ''PROGRESS" 

To revisit this earth, some ages after their 
departure from it, is a common wish among 
men. We frequently hear men say that they 
would give so many months or years of their 
lives in exchange for a less number on the 
globe one or two or three centuries from now. 
Merely to see the world from some remote 
sphere, like the distant spectator of a play 
which passes in dumb show, would not suffice. 
They would like to bo of the world again, 
and enter into its feelings, passions, hopes ; 
to feel the sweep of its current, and so to 
comprehend what it has become. 

I suppose that we all who are thoroughly 
interested in this world have this desire. There 
are some select souls who sit apart in calm en- 
durance, Avaiting to be translated out of a world 
they are almost tired of patronizing, to whom 
the w^hole thing seems, doubtless, like a cheap 
performance. They sit on the fence of criti- 
cism, and cannot for the life of them see what 



173 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

the vali2:ar crowd make such a toil and sweat 
about. The prizes are the same dreary, old, 
fading bay wreaths. As for the soldiers march- 
ing past, their uniforms are torn, their hats 
are shocking, their shoes are dusty, the}^ do 
not appear (to a man sitting on the fence) to 
march with any kind of spirit, their flags are 
old and tattered, the drums they beat are bar- 
barous; and, besides, it is not probable that 
they are going anywhere ; they will mere- 
ly come round again, the same people, like 
the marching chorus in the J^ajgars Oj)era. 
Such critics, of course, would not care to see 
the vulgar show over again ; it is enough for 
them to put on record their protest against it 
in the weekly Judginent Days which they 
edit, and by-and-by withdraw out of their pri- 
vate boxes, with pity for a world in the crea- 
tion of which they were not consulted. 

The desire to revisit this earth is, I think, 
based upon a belief, wellnigh universal, that 
the world is to make some progress, and that 
it will be more interesting in the future than 
it is now. I believe that the human mind, 
whenever it is developed enough to compre- 
hend its own action, rests, and has always rest- 
ed, in this expectation. I do not know any 
period of time in which the civilized mind has 



MR. fkoude's "pkooress" 17:j 

not had expectation of somethinf^ better for 
the race in the future. This expectation is 
sometimes stronger than it is at others ; and, 
again, there are always those who say that the 
Golden Age is behind them. It is always be- 
hind or before us; the poor present alone has 
no friends ; the present, in the minds of many, 
is only the car that is carrying us away from 
an age of virtue and of happiness, or that is 
perhaps bearing us on to a time of ease and 
comfort and security. 

Perhaps it is worth wliile, in view of certain 
recent discussions, and especially of some free 
criticisms of this country, to consider whether 
there is any intention of progress in this world, 
and whether that intention is discoverable in 
the age in which we live. If it is an old ques- 
tion, it is not a settled one ; the practical dis- 
belief in any such progress is \videly enter- 
tained. Not long ago Mr. James Anthony 
Froude published an essay on Progress, in 
which he examined some of the evidences 
upon which we rely to prove that we live in 
an " era of progress." It is a melancholy es- 
say, for its tone is that of profound scepticism 
as to certain influences and means of progress 
upon which we in this country most rely. 
With the illustrative arguments of Mr. Froude's 



174 EELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

essay I do not purpose specially to meddle ; I 
recall it to the attention of the reader as a rep- 
resentative type of scepticism regarding prog- 
ress which is somewhat common among intel- 
lectual men, and is not confined to England. 
It is not exactly an acceptance of Rousseau's 
notion that civilization is a mistake, and that 
it would be better for us all to return to a 
state of nature — though in John Ruskin's case 
it nearly amounts to this ; but it is a hostility 
in its last analysis to what we understand by 
the education of the people, and to the gov- 
ernment of the people by themselves. If Mr. 
Fronde's essay is anything but an exhibition 
of the scholarly weapons of criticism, it is the 
expression of a profound disbelief in the intel- 
lectual education of the masses of the people. 
Mr. Ruskin goes further. He makes his open 
proclamation against any emancipation from 
hand-toil. Steam is the devil himself let loose 
from the pit, and all labor-saving machinery is 
his own invention. Mr. Ruskin is the bull that 
stands upon the track and threatens with an- 
nihilation the on-coming locomotive; and I 
think that any spectator who sees his men- 
acing attitude and hears his roaring cannot 
but have fears for the locomotive. 
There are two sorts of infidelity concerning 



175 

humanity, and I do not know which is the 
more withering in its effects. One is that 
which regards this world as only a waste and 
a desert, across the sands of which we are 
merely fugitives, fleeing from the wrath to 
come. The other is that doubt of any divine 
intention in development, in history, which we 
call progress from age to age. 

In the eyes of this latter infidelity history 
is not a procession or a progression, but only 
a series of disconnected pictures, each little era 
rounded with its own growth, fruitage, and de- 
cay, a series of incidents or experiments, with- 
out even the string of a far-reaching purpose 
to connect them. There is no intention of 
progress in it all. The race is barbarous, and 
then it changes to civilized ; in the one case 
the strong rob the weak by brute force ; in the 
other the crafty rob the unwary by finesse. 
The latter is a more agreeable state of things ; 
but it comes to about the same. The robber 
used to knock us down and take away our 
sheepskins; he now administers chloroform 
and relieves us of our watches. It is a gen- 
tlemanly proceeding, and scientific, and we 
call it civilization. Meantime human nature 
remains the same, and the whole thing is a 
weary round that has no advance in it. 



176 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

If this is true the succession of men and of 
races is no better than a vegetable succession ; 
and Mr. Froude is quite right in doubting if 
education of the brain ^Yill do the Enghsh 
agricultural laborer any good ; and Mr. Kuskin 
ought to be aided in his crusade against ma- 
chinery, ^vhich turns the world upside down. 
The best that can be done with a man is the 
best that can be done with a plant — set him 
out in some favorable locality, or leave him 
where he happened to strike root, and there 
let him grow and mature in measure and 
quiet — especially quiet — as he may in God's 
sun and rain. If he happens to be a cabbage, 
in Heavens name don't try to make a rose of 
him, and do not disturb the vegetable maturing 
of his head by grafting ideas upon his stock. 

The most serious difficulty in the way of 
those who maintain that there is an intention 
of progress in this world from century to cen- 
tury, from age to age — a discernible groAvth, a 
universal development — is the fact that all na- 
tions do not make progress at the same time 
or in the same ratio ; that nations reach a cer- 
tain development, and then fall away and even 
retrograde ; that while one may be advancing 
into high civilization, another is lapsing into 
deeper barbarism, and that nations appear to 



MR. FKOUDE S PEOGEESS " 177 

have a limit of growth. If there were a law 
of progress, an intention of it in all the Avorld, 
ought not all peoples and tribes to advance 
pa7'i passtc, or at least ought there not to be 
discernible a general movement, historical and 
contemporary? There is no such general 
movement which can be computed, the law 
of which can be discovered — therefore it does 
not exist. In a kind of despair, we are apt to 
run over in our minds empires and pre-emi- 
nent civilizations that have existed, and then 
to doubt whether life in this world is intended 
to be anything more than a series of experi- 
ments. There is the German nation of our 
day, the most aggressive in various fields of 
intellectual activity, a Hercules of scholarship, 
the most thoroughly trained and powerful — 
though its civilization marches to the noise of 
the hateful and barbarous drum. In what 
points is it better than the Greek nation of 
the age of its superlative artists, philosophers, 
poets — the age of the most joyous, elastic hu- 
man souls in the most perfect human bodies ? 
Again, it is perhaps a fanciful notion that the 
Atlantis of Plato was the northern part of 
the South American continent, projecting out 
towards Africa, and that the Antilles are the 
peaks and headlands of its sunken bulk. But 

12 



178 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

there ^^re evidences enough that the shores of 
the Gujf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea 
were wi^thin historic periods the seat of a very 
consider^ j^ble civihzation — the seat of cities, of 
commerci^^ of trade, of palaces and pleasure- 
gardens— ^. faint images, perhaps, of the luxu- 
rious civi|ization of Bai^ and Pozzuoli and 
Capri in ^ the most profligate period of the 
Roman e^mpire. It is not more difiicult to 
believe tjaat there was a great material de- 
velopmp4t here than to believe it of the Afri- 
can sj^'ore of the Mediterranean. K'ot to mul- 
tiply instances that will occur to all, we see as 
many retrograde as advance movements, and 
we See, also, that while one spot of the earth 
at or^e time seems to be the chosen theatre of 
progress, other portions of the globe are abso- 
lutely dead and without the least leaven of 
advai^cins: life, and we cannot understand how 
this Ch,^ be if there is any such thing as an 
all-pervaLq|T3g and animating intention or law 
of progress. And then we are reminded that 
the individual human mind long ago attained 
its height; of power and capacity. It is enough 
to recall the names of Moses, Buddha, Confu- 
cius, Socrates, Paul, Homer, David. 

^S doubt it has seemed to other periods 
and other nations, as it now does to the 



MR. FEOUDe's "pEOGRESS" 179 

present civilized races, that they were the 
chosen times and peoples of an extraordinary 
and limitless development.. It must have 
seemed so to the Jews who overran Palestine 
and set their shining cities on all the hills of 
heathendom. It must have seemed so to the 
Babylonish conquerors who swept over Pales- 
tine in turn, on their way to greater conquests 
in Egypt. It must have seemed so to Greece 
when the Acropolis was to the outlying world 
what the imperial calla is to the marsh in 
which it lifts its superb flower. It must have 
seemed so to Eome when its solid roads of 
stone ran to all parts of a tributary world — 
the highways of the legions, her ministers, 
and of the wealth that poured into her treas- 
ury. It must have seemed so to followers of 
Mahomet, when the crescent knew no pause 
in its march up the Arabian peninsula to the 
Bosporus, to India, along the Mediterranean 
shores to Spain, where in the eighth century it 
flowered into a culture, a learning, a re- 
finement in art and manners, to which the 
Christian world of that day was a stranger. 
It must have seemed so in the awakening 
of the sixteenth century, when Europe, Spain 
leading, began that great movement of dis- 
covery and aggrandizement which has, in the 



ISO REIATION OF LITEEATURE TO LIFE 

end, been profitable only to a portion of the 
adventiu"ers. And what shall wo say of a 
nation as old, if not older than any of these 
we have mentioned, slowly building up mean- 
time a civihzation and perfecting a system 
of government and a social economy which 
should outlast them all, and remain to our day 
almost the sole monument of permanence and 
stability in a shifting world. 

How many times has the face of Europe 
been changed — and parts of Africa, and Asia 
Minor too, for that matter — by conquests and 
crusades, and the rise iuid fall of civilizations 
as well as dynasties l while China has endured, 
almost undisturbed, under a s^'stem of law, ad- 
ministration, morality, as old as the Pyramids 
probably — existed a coherent nation, highly 
developed in certain essentials, meeting and 
mastering, so far as we can see, the great 
problem of an over - populated territor3% liv- 
ing in a good degree of peace and social 
order, of respect for age and law, and malv- 
ing a continuous history, the mere record of 
which is printed in a thousand bulky vol- 
umes. Yet we spe^ik of the Chinese empire 
as an instance of arrested growth, for which 
there is no salvation, except it shall catch 
the spirit of progress abroad in the world. 



181 

What is this progress, and where does it come 
from 'i 

Think for a moment of this significant 
situation. For thousands of years, empires, 
systems of society, systems of civilization — 
Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, Eoman, Moslem, 
Feudal— liave flourished and fallen, grown to 
a certain height and passed away ; great or- 
ganized fabrics have gone down, and, if there 
has been any progress, it has been as often 
defeated as renewed. And here is an empire, 
apart from this scene of alternate success and 
disaster, which has existed in a certain con- 
tinuity and stability, and yet, now that it is 
uncovered and stands face to face with the 
rest of the world, it finds that it has little 
to teach us, and almost everything to learn 
from us. The old empire sends its students to 
learn of us, the newest child of civilization ; and 
through us they learn all the great past, its 
literature, law, science, out of which we sprang. 
It appears, then, that progress has, after all, 
been with the shifting world, that has been all 
this time going to pieces, rather than with the 
world that has been permanent and unshaken. 

When we speak of progress we may mean 
two things. We may mean a lifting of the 
races as a whole by reason of more power 



183 KELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

over the material world, by reason of what we 
call the conquest of nature and a practical use 
of its forces ; or we may mean a higher de- 
velopment of the individual man, so that he 
shall be better and happier. If from age to 
age it is discoverable that the earth is better 
adapted to man as a dwelling-place, and he is 
on the whole fitted to get more out of it for 
his own growth, is not that progress, and is it 
not evidence of an intention of progress ? 

I^ow, it is sometimes said that Providence, 
in the economy of this world, cares nothing 
for the individual, but works out its ideas and 
purposes through the races, and in certain 
periods, slowly bringing in, by great agencies 
and by processes destructive to individuals 
and to millions of helpless human beings, 
truths and principles; so laying stepping- 
stones onward to a great consummation. I 
do not care to dwell upon this thought, but 
let us see if we can find any evidence in his- 
tory of the presence in this world of an in- 
tention of progress. 

It is common to say that, if the Avorld 
makes progress at all, it is by its gi'eat men, 
and when anything important for the race is 
to be done, a great man is raised up to do it. 
Yet another way to look at it is, that the 



PROGRESS " 183 

doing of something at the appointed time 
makes the man who does it great, or at least 
celebrated. The man often appears to be only 
a favored instrument of communication. As 
we glance back we recognize the truth that, 
at this and that period, the time had come 
for certain discoveries. Intelligence seemed 
pressing in from the invisible. Many minds 
were on the alert to apprehend it. We believe, 
for instance, that if Gutenberg had not in- 
vented movable types, somebody else would 
have given them to the world about that time. 
Ideas, at certain times, throng for admission 
into the world ; and we are all familiar w^ith 
the fact that the same important idea (never 
before revealed in all the ages) occurs to 
separate and widely distinct minds at about 
the same time. The invention of the electric 
telegraph seemed to burst upon the world 
simultaneously from many quarters — not per- 
fect, perhaps, but the time for the idea had 
come — and happy was it for the man who en- 
tertained it. "We have agreed to call Colum- 
bus the discoverer of America, but I suppose 
there is no doubt that America had been 
visited by European, and probably Asiatic, 
people ages before Columbus; that four or 
five centuries before him people from northern 



184 EELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

Europe bad settlements here; he was for- 
tunate, however, in " discovering '■ it in the 
fulness of time, when the world, in its prog- 
ress, was ready for it. If the Greeks had had 
gunpowder, electro - magnetism, the printing- 
press, history would need to be rewritten. 
Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find 
out these things is a m^^stery upon any other 
theory than the one we are considering. 

And it is as mysterious that China, having 
gunpowder and the art of printing, is not to- 
day like Germany. 

There seems to me to be a progress, or an 
intention of progress, in the world, indepen- 
dent of individual men. Things get on by all 
sorts of instruments, and sometimes by very 
poor ones. There are times when new thoughts 
or applications of known principles seem to 
throng from the invisible for expression 
through human media, and there is hardly 
ever an important invention set free in the 
world that men do not appear to be ready 
cordially to receive it. Often we should be 
justified in saying that there was a widespread 
expectation of it. Almost all the great inven- 
tions and the ingenious application of prin- 
ciples have many claimants for the honor of 
priority. 



185 

On any other theory than this, that there 
is present in the world an intention of prog- 
ress which outlasts individuals, and even races, 
I cannot account for the fact that, while civil- 
izations decay and pass away, and human 
systems go to pieces, ideas remain and ac- 
cumulate. We, the latest age, are the inherit- 
ors of all the foregoing ages. I do not believe 
that anything of importance has been lost to 
the world. The Jewish civilization was torn 
up root and branch, but whatever was valu- 
able in the Jewish polity is ours now. We 
may say the same of the civilizations of Athens 
and of Eome ; though the entire organization 
of the ancient world, to use Mr. Fronde's 
figure, collapsed into a heap of incoherent 
sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and 
Eoman law are part of the world's solid pos- 
sessions. 

Even those who question the value to the 
individual of what we call progress, admit, I 
suppose, the increase of knowledge in the 
world from age to age, and not only its in- 
crease, but its diffusion. The intelligent 
school -boy to-day knows more than the 
ancient sages knew — more about the visible 
heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, 
more of the human body. The rudiments 



186 RELATION OF LITERATUKE TO LIFE 

of his education, the common experiences 
of his every-day hfe, Tvere, at the best, the 
guesses and speculations of a remote age. 
There is certainly an accumulation of facts, 
ideas, knowledge. Whether this makes men 
better, wiser, happier, is indeed disputed. 

In order to maintain the notion of a general 
and intended progress, it is not necessary to 
show that no preceding age has excelled ours 
in some special development. Phidias has had 
no rival in sculpture, we may admit. It is 
possible that glass was once made as flexible 
as leather, and that copper could be hardened 
like steel. But I do not take much stock in 
the "lost arts," the wondering theme of the 
lyceums. The knowledge of the natural 
world, and of materials, was never, I believe, 
so extensive and exact as it is to-day. It is 
possible that there are tricks of chemistry, 
ingenious processes, secrets of color, of which 
we are ignorant ; but I do not believe there 
was ever an ancient alchemist who could not 
be taught something in a modern laboratory. 
The vast engineering works of the ancient 
Egyptians, the remains of their temples and 
pyramids excite our wonder; but I have no 
doubt that President Grant, if he becomes the 
tyrant they say he is becoming, and commands 



MR. FKOUDE S " PROGRESS " 187 

the labor of forty millions of slaves — a large 
proportion of them office - holders, — could 
build a Karnak, or erect a string of pyramids 
across I^ew Jersey. 

Mr. Froude runs lightly over a list of sub- 
jects upon which the believer in progress relies 
for his belief, and then says of them that the 
world calls this progress — he calls it only 
change. I suppose he means by this two 
things: that these great movements of our 
modern life are not any evidence of a perma- 
nent advance, and that our whole structure 
may tumble into a heap of incoherent sand, as 
systems of society have done before; and, 
again, that it is questionable if, in what we 
call a stride in civilization, the individual cit- 
izen is becoming any purer or more just, or if 
his intelligence is directed towards learning and 
doing what is right, or only to the means of 
more extended pleasures. 

It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the first 
of these points — the permanence of our ad- 
vance, if it is an advance. But we may be 
encouraged by one thing that distinguishes 
this period — say from the middle of the 
eighteenth century — from any that has pre- 
ceded it. I mean the introduction of machin- 
ery, applied to the multiplication of man's 



188 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

power in a hundred directions — to manufactur- 
ing, to locomotion, to the diffusion of thought 
and of knowledge. I need not dwell upon this 
familiar topic. Since this period began there 
has been, so far as I know, no retrograde move- 
ment anywhere, but, besides the material, an 
intellectual and spiritual kindling the world 
over, for which history has no sort of parallel. 
Truth is always tlie same, and will make its 
way, but this subject might be illustrated by a 
study of the relation of Christianity and of the 
brotherhood of men to machinery. The theme 
would demand an essay by itself. I leave it 
with the one remark, that this great change 
now being wrought in the world b}^ the multi- 
plicity of machinery is not more a material 
than it is an intellectual one, and that we have 
no instance in histoiy of a catastrophe wide- 
spread enough and adequate to sweep away its 
. results. That is to sa^^none of the catastrophes, 
not even the corruptions, which brought to 
ruin the ancient civilizations, would work any- 
thing like the same disaster in an age which 
has the use of machinery that this age has. 

For instance : Gibbon selects the period be- 
tween the accession of Trajan and the death of 
Marcus Aurelius as the time in which the 
human race enjoyed more general happiness 



189 

than they had ever known before, or had since 
known. Yet, says Mr. Fronde, in the midst of 
this prosperity the heart of the empire was 
dying out of it ; luxury and selfishness were 
eating away the principle that held society to- 
gether, and the ancient world was on the point 
of collapsing into a heap of incoherent sand. 
Now, it is impossible to conceive that the 
catastrophe which did happen to that civiliza- 
tion could have happened if the world had 
then possessed the steam-engine, the printing- 
press, and the electric telegraph. The Eoman 
power might have gone down, and the face of 
the world been recast; but such universal 
chaos and such a relapse for the individual 
people would seem impossible. 

If we turn from these general considera- 
tions to the evidences that this is an " era of 
progress" in the condition of individual men, 
we are met by more specific denials. Granted, 
it is said, all your facilities for travel and com- 
munication, for cheap and easy manufacture, 
for the distribution of cheap literature and 
news, your cheap education, better homes, and 
all the comforts and luxuries of your machine 
civilization, is the average man, the agricult- 
urist, the machinist, the laborer any better for 
it all? Are there more purity, more honest. 



190 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

fair dealing, genuine work, fear and honor of 
God ? Are the proceeds of hibor more evenly 
distributed? These, it is said, are the criteria 
of progress ; all else is misleading. 

ISTow, it is true that the ultimate end of any 
system of government or civilization should be 
the improvement of the individual man. And 
yet this truth, as Mr. Froude puts it, is only a 
half-truth, so that this single test of any system 
may not do for a given time and a limited 
area. Other and wider considerations come in. 
Disturbances, which for a while unsettle soci- 
et}" and do not bring good results to individuals, 
may, nevertheless, be necessary, and may be a 
sign of progress. Take the favorite illustration 
of Mr. Froude and Mr. Euskin — the condition 
of the agricultural laborer of England. If I 
understand them, the civilization of the last 
century has not helped his position as a man. 
If I understand them, he was a better man, in 
a better condition of earthly happiness, and 
with a better chance of heaven, fifty years ago 
than now, before the " era of progress " found 
him out. (It ought to be noticed here, that 
the report of the Parliamentary Commission 
on the condition of the English agricultural 
laborer does not sustain Mr. Fronde's assump- 
tions. On the contrary, the report shows that 



191 

his condition is in almost all respects vastly- 
better than it was fifty years ago.) Mr. Euskin 
would remove the steam-engine and all its 
devilish works from his vicinity; he would 
abolish factories, speedy travel by rail, new- 
fangled instruments of agriculture, our patent 
education, and remit him to his ancient con- 
dition — tied for life to a bit of ground, which 
should supply all his simple wants ; his wife 
should weave the clothes for the family; his 
children should learn nothing but the catechism 
and to speak the truth; he should take his 
religion without question from the hearty, fox- 
hunting parson, and live and die undisturbed 
by ideas. ISTow, it seems to me that if Mr. 
Kuskin could realize in some isolated nation 
this idea of a pastoral, simple existence, under 
a paternal government, he would have in time 
an ignorant, stupid, brutal community in a 
great deal worse case than the agricultural 
laborers of England are at present. Three- 
fourths of the crime in the kingdom of Bavaria 
is committed in the Ultramontane region of 
the Tyrol, where the conditions of popular 
education are about those that Mr. Euskin 
seems to regret as swept away by the present 
movement in England — a stagnant state of 
things, in which any wind of heaven would be 



193 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

a blessing, even if it were a tornado. Educa- 
tion of the modern sort unsettles the peasant, 
renders hini unlit for hibor, and gives us a 
half-educated idler in place of a conscientious 
workman. The disuse of the apprentice sys- 
tem is not made good b}^ the present S3'stem 
of education, because no one learns a trade 
well, and the consequence is poor work, and 
a sham civilization generally. There is some 
truth in these complaints. But the way out 
is not backward, but forward. The fault is 
not with education, though it may be Avitli 
the kind of education. The education must 
go forward ; the man must not be half but 
wholly educated. It is only half-knowledge, 
like half-training in a trade, that is dangerous. 
But what I wish to say is, that notwith- 
standing certain unfavorable things in the con- 
dition of the English laborer and mechanic, 
his chance is better in the main than it was 
fifty years ago. The world is a better world 
for him. He has the opportunity to be more of 
a man. His world is wider, and it is all open 
to him to go where he will. Mr. Euskin may 
not so easily find his ideal, contented peasant, 
but the man himself begins to apprehend that 
this is a world of ideas as well as of food and 
clothes, and I think, if he were consulted, he 



193 

would have no desire to return to the condition 
of his ancestors. In fact, the most hopeful 
symptom in the condition of the English 
peasant is his discontent. For, as scepticism 
is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discon- 
tent is the mother of progress. The man is 
comparatively of little use in the world who is 
contented. 

There is another thought pertinent here. It 
is this : that no man, however humble, can live 
a full life if he lives to himself alone. He is 
more of a man, he lives in a higher plane of 
thought and of enjoyment, the more his com- 
munications are extended with his fellows and 
the wider his sympathies are. I count it a 
great thing for the English peasant, a solid ad- 
dition to his life, that he is every day being put 
into more intimate relations with every other 
man on the globe. 

I know it is said that these are only vague 
and sentimental notions of progress — notions 
of a "salvation by machinery." Let us pass to 
something that may be less vague, even if it be 
more sentimental. For a hundred years we 
have reckoned it progress, that the people were 
taking part in government. We have had a 
good deal of faith in the proposition put forth 
at Philadelphia a century ago, that men are, in 

13 



194 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

effect, equal in political rights. Out of this 
simple proposition springs logically the exten- 
sion of suffrage, and a universal education, in 
order that this important function of a govern- 
ment by the people may be exercised intel- 
ligently. 

JN'ow we are told by the most accomplished 
English essayists that this is a mistake, that it 
is change, but no progress. Indeed, there are 
philosophers in America who think so. At 
least I infer so from the fact that Mr. Fronde 
fathers one of his delinitions of our condition 
upon an American. AYhon a block of printers 
type is by accident broken up and disintegrat- 
ed, it falls into what is called *' pi.'' The ''pi,-' 
a mere chaos, is afterwards sorted and distrib- 
uted, preparatory to being built up into fresh 
combinations. ''A distinguished American 
friend,'' says Mr. Fronde, '' describes Democra- 
cy as making pi." It is so witty a sarcasm that 
I almost think Mr. Froude manufactured it 
himself. Well, we have been making this ''pi'' 
for a hundred years ; it seems to be a national 
dish in considerable favor witli the rest of the 
world — even such ancient nations as China and 
Japan want a piece of it. 

Now, of course, no form of human govern- 
ment is perfect, or anything like it, but I should 



195 

be willing to submit the question to an Eng- 
lish traveller, even whether, on the whole, the 
people of the United States do not have as fair 
a chance in life and feel as little the oppression 
of government as any other in the world; 
whether anywhere the burdens are more lifted 
off men's shoulders. 

This infidelity to popular government and 
unbelief in any good results to come from it 
are not, unfortunately, confined to the English 
essayists. I am not sure but the notion is 
growing in what is called the intellectual class, 
that it is a mistake to intrust the government 
to the ignorant many, and that it can only be 
lodged safely in the hands of the wise few. 
We hear the corruptions of the times attrib- 
uted to universal suffrage. Yet these corrup- 
tions certainly are not peculiar to the United 
States. It is also said here, as it is in Eng- 
land, that our diffused and somewhat super- 
ficial education is merely unfitting the mass 
of men, who must be laborers, for any useful 
occupation. 

This argument, reduced to plain terms, is 
simply this : that the mass of mankind are 
unfit to decide properly their own political 
and social condition; and that for the mass 
of mankind any but a very limited mental de- 



196 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

Yclopmont is to be deprecated. It would be 
enough to say of this, that chiss government 
and popular ignorance have been tried for so 
many ages, and always with disaster and fail- 
ure in the end, that I should think philan- 
thropical historians would be tired of rec- 
ommending them. But there is more to be 
said. 

I feel that as a resident on earth, part owner 
of it for a time, unavoidably a member of so- 
ciety, I have a right to a voice in determining 
what my condition and what m}^ chance in life 
shall be. I may be ignorant, I should be a very 
poor ruler of other people, but I am better 
capable of deciding some things that touch 
me nearly than another is. By what logic 
can I say that I should have a part in the con- 
duct of this world and that my neighbor should 
not? Who is to decide Avhat degree of intelli- 
gence shall lit a man for a share in the govern- 
ment ? How are we to select the few capable 
men that are to rule all the rest i As a matter 
of fact, men have been rulers who had neither 
the average intelligence nor virtue of the peo- 
ple tliey governed. And, as a matter of his- 
torical experience, a class in power has always 
sought its own benetit rather than that of the 
whole people. Lunacy, extraordinary stupid- 



197 

ity, and crime aside, a man is the best guardian 
of his own liberty and rights. 

The English critics, who say avo have taken 
the government from the capable few and given 
it to the people, speak of universal suffrage as 
a quack panacea of tliis " era of progress." But 
it is not the manufactured panacea of any the- 
orist or philosopher whatever. It is the nat- 
ural result of a diffused knowledge of human 
rights and of increasing intelligence. It is 
nothing against it that Napoleon III. used a 
mockery of it to govern France. It is not a 
device of the closet, but a method of govern- 
ment, which has naturally suggested itself to 
men as they have grown into a feeling pf self- 
reliance and a consciousness that they have 
some right in the decision of their own destiny 
in the world. It is true that suffrage peculiarly 
fits a people virtuous and intelligent. But 
there has not yet been invented any govern- 
ment in which a people would thrive who 
were ignorant and vicious. 

Our foreign critics seem to regard our "Amer- 
ican system," by-the-way, as a sort of invention 
or patent - right, upon which we are experi- 
menting ; forgetting that it is as legitimate a 
growth out of our circumstances as the English 
system is out of its antecedents. Our system 



198 BELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

is not the product of theorists or closet philos- 
ophers ; but it was ordained in substance and 
inevitable from the day the first " town meet- 
ing" assembled in New England, and it was 
not in the power of Hamilton or any one else 
to make it otherwise. 

So you must have education, now you have 
the ballot, say the critics of this era of prog- 
ress ; and this is another of your cheap inven- 
tions. Not that we undervalue book knowl- 
edge. Oh no ! but it really seems to us that a 
good trade, with the Lord's Prayer and the 
Ten Commandments back of it, would be the 
best thing for most of you. You must work 
for a living anyway ; and why, now, should 
you unsettle your minds ? 

This is such an astounding view of human 
life and destiny that I do not know what to 
say to it. Did it occur to Mr. Froude to ask 
the man whether he would be contented with 
a good trade and the Ten Commandments? 
Perhaps the man would like eleven command- 
ments ? And, if he gets hold of the eleventh, he 
may want to know something more about his 
fellow-men, a little geography maybe, and some 
of Mr. Fronde's history, and thus he may be led 
off into literature, and the Lord knows where. 

The inference is that education — book 



199 

fashion — will unfit the man for useful work. 
Mr. Froude here again stops at a half-truth. 
As a general thing, intelligence is useful in 
any position a man occupies. But it is true that 
there is a superficial and misdirected sort of 
education, so called, which makes the man who 
receives it despise labor ; and it is also true 
that in the present educational revival there 
has been a neglect of training in the direction 
of skilled labor, and we all suffer more or less 
from cheap and dishonest work. But the way 
out of this, again, is forward, and not back- 
ward. It is a good sign, and not a stigma 
upon this era of progress, that people desire 
education. But this education must be of the 
whole man; he must be taught to work as 
well as to read, and he is, indeed, poorly edu- 
cated if he is not fitted to do his work in the 
world. We certainly shall not have better 
workmen by having ignorant workmen. I 
need not say that the real education is that 
which will best fit a man for performing well 
his duties in life. If Mr. Froude, instead of 
his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, 
and of the Ten Commandments in England, 
had recommended the establishment of indus- 
trial schools, he would have spoken more to 
the purpose. 



300 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

I should say that the fashionable scepticism 
of tcvday, here and in England, is in regard to 
universal sutfrage and the capacity of the peo- 
ple to govern themselves. The whole system is 
the sharp invention of Thomas JelTerson and 
others, by Avhich crafty demagogues can rule. 
Instead of being, as we have patrioticall}^ sup- 
posed, a real progress in human development, 
it is only a fetich, Avhich is becoming rapidly a 
failure. Now, there is a great deal of truth in 
the assertion that, whatever the form of gov- 
ernment, the ablest men, or the strongest, or 
the most cunning in the nation, will rule. And 
yet it is true that in a popular government, 
like this, the humblest citizen, if he is wronged 
or oppressed, has in his hands a readier instru- 
ment of redress than be has ever had in any 
form of government. And it must not be for- 
gotten tliat the ballot in the hands of all is 
perhaps the only safeguard against the tyranny 
of wealth in the hands of the few. It is true 
that bad men can band together and be de- 
struotive ; but so they can in any government. 
Eevolution by ballot is much safer than I'evo- 
lution by violence ; and, granting that human 
nature is seltish, when the whole people are 
the government seltishness is on the side of 
the government. Can you mention any class 



MK. FROUDE's " PROGRESS " 201 

in this country whose interest it is to overturn 
the government ? And, then, as to the wis- 
dom of the popuhir decisions by the ballot in 
this country. Look carefully at all the Presi- 
dential elections from Washington's down, and 
say, in the light of history, if the popular de- 
cision has not, every time, been the best for 
the country. It may not have seemed so to 
some of us at the time, but I think it is true, 
and a very significant fact. 

Of course, in this affirmation of belief that 
one hundred years of popular government in 
this country is a real progress for humanity, 
and not merely a change from the rule of the 
fit to the rule of the cunning, we cannot for- 
get that men are pretty much everywhere the 
same, and that we have abundant reason for 
national humility. We are pretty well aware 
that ours is not an ideal state of society, and 
should be so, even if the English who pass by 
did not revile us, wagging their heads. We 
might differ with them about the causes of our 
disorders. Doubtless, extended suffrage has 
produced certain results. It seems, strangely 
enough, to have escaped the observation of 
our English friends that to suffrage was due 
the late horse disease. No one can discover 
any other cause for it. But there is a cause 



80B RELATION OF LTTERATUKE TO LIFE 

for the various phenomena of this period of 
shoddy, of intlatod speculation, of disturbance 
of all values, sociiU, luonil, political, and ma- 
terial, quite sullicient in the light of history 
to account for them. It is not suffrage ; it is 
an irreiieemable paper currency. It has borne 
its usual fruit Avith us, and neither foivign nor 
home critics Ciin shift the responsibihty of it 
upon our system of government. Yes, it is 
true, we have contrived to till the Avoiid with 
our scandals of late, I might refer to a loose 
commetviiil and political morality: to betrayals 
of popular trust in politics ; to corruptions in 
legislatures and in corporations ; to an abuse 
of |K>wer in the public press, which has hardly 
yet got itself adjusted to its sudden accession 
of enormous intluence. AVe compkiin of its 
injustice to individuals sometimes. We might 
imagine that something like this would occur. 

A newspaper one day says : ** AVe ai*e ex- 
ceedingly p\ined to hear that the Hon. Mr. 
Blank, who is running for Congivss in the 
First District, has permitted his aged grand- 
mother to go to the town poor-house. AVhat 
renders this conduct inexplicable is the fact 
that Mr. Blank is a man of large fortune.'" 

The next day the newspaper s;iys : *' The 
Hon. Mr. Blank has not seen tit to denv the 



ME. FROUDe's "pEOGKESs" 203 

damaging accusation in regard to the treat- 
ment of his grandmother." 

The next day tlie newspaper says : " Mr. 
Blank is still silent. He is probably aware 
that he cannot afford to rest under this grave 
charge." 

The next day the newspaper asks : " Where's 
Blank ? Has he fled ?" 

At last, goaded by these remarks, and most 
unfortunately for himself, Mr. Blank writes to 
the newspaper and most indignantly denies 
the charge ; he never sent his grandmother to 
the poor-house. 

Thereupon the newspaper says, " Of course, 
a rich man who would put his own grand- 
mother in the poor-house would deny it. Our 
informant was a gentleman of character. Mr. 
Blank rests the matter on his unsupported 
word. It is a question of veracity." 

Or, perhaps, Mr. Blank, more unfortunately 
for himself, begins by making an affidavit, 
wherein he swears that he never sent his 
grandmother to the poor-house, and that, in 
point of fact, he has not any grandmother 
whatever. 

The newspaper then, in language that is 
now classical, " goes for " Mr. Blank. It says, 
" Mr. Blank resorts to the common device of 



204 EELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

the rogue — the affidavit. If he had been con- 
scious of rectitude, would he not have rehed 
upon his simple denial?" 

jN"ow, if an extreme case like this could oc- 
cur, it would be bad enough. But, in our free 
society, the remedy would be at hand. The 
constituents of Mr. Blank would elect him in 
triumph. The newspaper would lose public 
confidence and support and learn to use its 
position more justl}^ What I mean to indi- 
cate by such an extreme instance as this is, 
that in our very license of individual freedom 
there is finally a correcting power. 

We might pursue this general subject of 
progress by a comparison of the society of 
this country now with that fifty years ago. I 
have no doubt that in ever}^ essential this is 
better than that, in manners, in morality, in 
charity and toleration, in education and re- 
ligion. I know the standard of morality is 
higher. I know the churches are purer. Not 
fifty years ago, in a New England town, a 
distinguished doctor of divinity, the pastor of 
a leading church, was part owner in a dis- 
tillery. He was a great light in his denom- 
ination, but he was an extravagant liver, and, 
being unable to pay his debts, he was arrest- 
ed and put into jail, with the liberty of the 



205 

" limits." In order not to interrupt his minis- 
terial work, the jail limits were made to include 
his house and his church, so that he could 
still go in and out before his people. I do not 
think that could occur anywhere in the United 
States to-day. 

I will close these fragmentary suggestions 
by saying that I, for one, should like to see 
this country a century from now. Those who 
live then will doubtless say of this period that 
it was crude, and rather disorderly, and fer- 
menting with a great many new projects ; but 
I have great faith that they will also say that 
the present extending notion, that the best 
government is for the people, by the people, 
was in the line of sound progress. I should 
expect to find faith in humanity greater and 
not less than it is now, and I should not ex- 
pect to find that Mr. Fronde's mournful ex- 
pectation had been realized, and that the 
belief in a life beyond the grave had been 
withdrawn. 

(1871.) 



ENGLAND 



ENGLAND 

England has played a part in modern his- 
tory altogether out of proportion to its size. 
The whole of Great Britain, including Ire- 
land, has only eleven thousand more square 
miles than Italy; and England and Wales 
alone are not half so large as Italy. England 
alone is about the size of North Carolina. It 
is, as Franklin, in 1763, wrote to Mary Steven- 
son in London, " that petty island which, com- 
pared to America, is but a stepping-stone in a 
brook, scarce enough of it above water to 
keep one's shoes dry." 

A considerable portion of it is under water, 
or water-soaked a good part of the year, and 
I suppose it has more acres for breeding frogs 
than any other northern land, except Holland. 
Old Harrison says that the North Britons 
when overcome by hunger used to creep into 
the marshes till the water was up to their 
chins and there remain a long time, '* onlie to 
qualifie the heats of their stomachs by vio- 

14 



210 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

lence, wbicll otherwise would have wrought 
and beene readie to oppresse them for hunger 
and want of sustinance." It lies so far north — 
the latitude of Labrador — that the winters are 
long and the climate inhospitable. It would 
be severely cold if the Gulf Stream did not 
make it always damp and curtain it with 
clouds. In some parts the soil is heavy with 
water, in others it is onl}^ a thin stratum 
above the chalk ; in fact, agricultural produc- 
tion could scarcely be said to exist there until 
fortunes made in India and in other foreign 
adventure enabled the owners of the land to 
pile it knee- deep Avitli fertilizers from Peru 
and elsewhere. Thanks to accumulated wealth 
and the Gulf Stream, its turf is green and soft ; 
fig's, which will not mature with us north of the 
capes of Virginia, ripen in sheltered nooks in 
Oxford, and the large and unfrequent straw- 
berry sometimes appears upon the dinner- 
table in such profusion that the guests can 
indulge in one apiece. 

Yet this small, originally infertile island has 
been for two centuries, and is to-day, the most 
vital influence on the globe. Cast your eye 
over the world upon her possessions, insular 
and continental, into any one of which, almost, 
England might be dropped, with shght dis- 



ENGLAND 211 

turbance, as )''ou would transfer a hanging 
garden. For any parallel to her power and 
possessions you must go back to ancient 
Rome. Egypt under Thotmes and Seti over- 
ran the then known world and took tribute of 
it ; but it was a temporary wave of conquest 
and not an assimilation. Rome sent her laws 
and her roads to the end of the earth, and 
made an empire of it ; but it was an empire of 
barbarians largely, of dynasties rather than 
of peoples. The dynasties fought, the dynas- 
ties submitted, and the dynasties paid the 
tribute. The modern "people'' did not exist. 
One battle decided the fate of half the world 
— it might be lost or won for a woman's eyes ; 
the flight of a chieftain might settle the fate 
of a province ; a campaign might determine 
the allegiance of half Asia. There was but 
one compact, disciplined, law-ordered nation, 
and that had its seat on the Tiber. 

Under what different circumstances did 
England win her position ! Before she came 
to the front, Venice controlled, and almost 
monopolized, the trade of the Orient. When 
she entered upon her career Spain was almost 
omnipotent in Europe, and was in possession 
of more than half the Western world ; and be- 
sides Spain, England had, wherever she went, 



213 RELATION OF IJTERATURE TO LIFE 

to contend for a foothold with Portugal, skilled 
in trade and adventure ; and AYith Holland, rich, 
and powerful on the sea. That is to say, she 
met everywhere civilizations old and techni- 
cally her superior. Of the ruling powers, she 
was the least in arts and arms. If you will 
take time to fill out this picture, you will have 
some conception of the marvellous achieve- 
ments of England, say since the abdication of 
the Emperor Charles Y. 

This little island is to-day the centre of the 
wealth, of the solid civilization, of the world. 
I will not say of art, of music, of the lighter 
social fi^races that make life ai^reeable ; but I 
Avill say of the moral forces that make prog- 
ress possible and worth while. Of this island 
the centre is London ; of London the heart is 
" the City,"* and in the City you can put your 
finger on one spot where the pulse of the 
world is distinct!}" felt to beat. The Moslem 
regards the Kaaba at Mecca as the centre of 
the universe : but that is only a theological 
phrase. The centre of the world is the Bank 
of En<rland in Leadenhall Street. There is not 
an occurrence, not a conquest or a defeat, a 
revolution, a panic, a famine, an abundance, 
not a change in value of money or material, 
no depression or stoppage in trade, no recov- 



ENGLAND 313 

ery, no political, and scarcely any great relig- 
ious movement — say the civil deposition of the 
Pope or the Wahhabee revival in Arabia and 
India — that does not report itself instantly at 
this sensitive spot. Other capitals feel a local 
influence; this feels all the local influences. 
Put your ear at the door of the Bank or the 
Stock Exchange near by, and you hear the 
roar of the world. 

But this is not all, nor the most strikinor 
thing, nor the greatest contrast to the em- 
pires of Eome and of Spain. The civilization 
that has gone forth from England is a self- 
sustaining one, vital to grow where it is 
planted, in vast communities, in an order that 
does not depend, as that of the Eoman world 
did, upon edicts and legions from the capital. 
And it must be remembered that if the land 
empire of England is not so vast as that of 
Kome, England has for two centuries been 
mistress of the seas, with all the consequences 
of that opportunity — consequences to trade 
beyond computation. And we must add to 
all this that an intellectual and moral power 
has been put forth from England clear round 
the globe, and felt beyond the limits of the 
English tongue. 

How is it that Eno^land has attained this 



214 EELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

supremacy — a supremacy in vain disputed on 
land and on sea by France, but now threat- 
ened by an equipped and disciplined Ger- 
many, by an unformed Colossus — a Slav and 
Tartar conglomerate ; and perhaps by one of 
her own children, the United States ? I will 
mention some of the things that have deter- 
mined England's extraordinary career; and 
they will help us to consider her prospects. 
I name: 

1. The Race. It is a mixed race, but with 
certain dominant qualities, which we call, loose- 
ly, Teutonic; certainly the most aggressive, 
tough, and vigorous people the world has seen. 
It does not shrink from any climate, from any 
exposure, from any geographic condition ; yet 
its choice of migration and of residence has 
mainly been on the grass belt of the globe, 
where soil and moisture produce good turf, 
where a changing and unequal climate, with 
extremes of heat and cold, calls out the phys- 
ical resources, stimulates invention, and re- 
quires an aggressive and defensive attitude of 
mind and body. The early history of this 
people is marked by two things : 

(1) Town and village organizations, nurs- 
eries of law, order, and self-dependence, nuclei 
of power, capable of indefinite expansion, lead- 



ENGLAND 215 

ing directly io a free and a strong govern- 
ment, the breeders of civil liberty. 

(2) Individualism in religion, Protestantism 
in the widest sense : I mean by this, cultiva- 
tion of the individual conscience as against 
authority. This trait was as marked in this 
sturdy people in Catholic England as it is in 
Protestant England. It is in the blood. Eng- 
land never did submit to Eome, not even as 
France did, though the Gallic Church held out 
well. Take the struggle of Henry 11. and the 
hierarchy. Eead the fight with prerogative 
all along. The English Church never could 
submit. It is a shallow reading of history to 
attribute the linal break with Kome to the un- 
bridled passion of Henry YIIL; that was an 
occasion only : if it had not been that, it would 
have been something else. 

Here we have the two necessary traits in the 
character of a great people : the love and the 
habit of civil liberty and religious conviction 
and independence. Allied to these is another 
trait — truthfulness. To speak the truth in 
word and action, to the verge of blunt ness and 
offence — and with more relish sometimes be- 
cause it is individually obnoxious and unlovely 
— is an English trait, clearly to be traced in 
the character of this people, notwithstanding 



216 RELATION OF LH'KRATLTRB TO LIFE 

tho equivocations of Elizabethan diplomacy, 
the proverbial lying of English shopkeepei*s, 
and the fraudulent adulteration of English 
nianufactui^es. Not to lie is perhaps as much 
a matter of insular pride as of morals ; to lie 
is unbecoming an Englishman. AVhen Captain 
Burnabv was on his way to Khiva he would 
tolerate no Oriental exaiioeration of his armv 
rank, although a higher title would have 
smoothed his way and added to his consider- 
ation. An English ollicial who was a captive 
at Bokhara (or Khiva) was offered his life by 
the Khan if he would abjure the Christian 
faith and say he was a Moslem ; but he pre- 
ferred death rather than the advantage of a 
temporary equivocation. I do not suppose 
that he was a specially pious man at home or 
that he was a martyr to religious principle, 
but for the moment Christianity stood for 
England i\nd English honor and civilization. 
I can believe that a rough English sailor, who 
had not used a sacred name, except in vain, 
since he said his prayer at his mother's knee, 
accepteii death under like circumstances rath- 
er than say he was not a Christian. 

The next determining cause in England's 
career is 

11. Th6 imular position. Poor as the island 



ENGLAND 217 

was, this was the opportunity. See what 
came of it : 

(1) Maritime opportunity. The irregular 
coast -lines, the bays and harbors, the near 
islands and mainlands invited to the sea. The 
nation became, jper force^ sailors — as the an- 
cient Greeks were and the modern Greeks are : 
adventurers, discoverers — hardy, ambitious, 
seeking food from the sea and wealth from 
every side. 

(2) Their position protected them. What 
they got they could keep ; wealth could ac- 
cumulate. Invasion was difficult and prac- 
tically impossible to their neighbors. And yet 
they were in the bustling world, close to the 
continent, commanding the most important of 
the navigable seas. The wealth of Holland 
was on the one hand, the wealth of France on 
the other. They held the keys. 

(3) The insular position and their free institu- 
tions invited refugees from all the Continent, ar- 
tisans and skilled laborers of all kinds. Hence, 
the beginning of their great industries, which 
made England rich in proportion as her au- 
thority and chance of trade expanded over dis- 
tant islands and continents. But this would 
not have been possible without the third ad- 
vantage which I shall mention, and that is : 



318 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

III. Coal. England's power and wealth rest- 
ed npon her coal-beds. In this bounty nature 
was more liberal to the tight little island 
than to any other spot in Western Europe, and 
England took earl}^ advantage of it. To be 
sure, her coal-iield is smdl compared with 
that of the United States — an area of only 
11,000 square miles to our 102,000. But Ger- 
many has only IT 70 ; Belgium, 510 ; France, 
2086 ; and Eussia onl}^ in her expansion of ter- 
ritory loads Europe in this respect, and has 
now 30,000 square miles of coal-beds. But 
see the use Eno-land makes of this material: 
in 1877, she took out of the ground 134,170,968 
tons. The United States the same year took 
out 50,000,000 tons; Germany, 48,000,000; 
France, 16,000,000 ; Belgium, 14,000,000. This 
tells the story of the heavy industries. 

AVe have considered as elements of national 
greatness the race itself, the favorable position, 
and the material to work with. I need not 
enlarge upon the might and the possessions of 
Enirland, nor the oenoral beneticence of her 
occupation wherever she has established fort, 
factory, or colony. AVith her flag go much 
injustice, domineering, and cruelty; but, on 
the whole, the best elements of civilization. 

The intellectual domination of England has 



ENGLAND 219 

been as striking as the physical. It is stamped 
upon all her colonies; it has by no means dis- 
appeared in the United States. For more than 
fifty years after our independence we import- 
ed our intellectual food — with the exception 
of politics, and theology in certain forms — 
and largely our ethical guidance from England. 
We read English books, or imitations of the 
English way of looking at things ; we even ac- 
cepted the English caricatures of our own life 
as genuine — notably in the case of the so- 
called typical Yankee. It is only recently that 
our writers have begun to describe our own 
life as it is, and that readers begin to feel that 
our society may be as interesting in print as 
that English society which they have been all 
their lives accustomed to read about. The 
reading- books of children in schools were 
filled with English essays, stories, English 
views of life ; it was the English heroines over 
whose woes the girls wept ; it was of the Eng- 
lish heroes that the boys declaimed. I do not 
know how much the imagination has to do in 
shaping the national character, but for half a 
century English writers, by poems and novels, 
controlled the imagination of this country. 
The principal reading then, as now — and per- 
haps more then than now — was fiction, and 



220 KELATION OF UTEKATURE TO LIFE 

nearly all of this England supplied. We took 
in with it, it will be noticed, not only the ro- 
mance and gilding of chivalry and legitimacy, 
such as Scott gives us, but constant instruction 
in a societv of ranks and degrees, orders of no- 
bility and commonalty, a fixed social status, a 
well-ordered, and often attractive, permanent 
social inequality, a state of life aijd relations 
based upon lingering feudal conditions and prej- 
udices. The background of all English fic- 
tion is monarchical; however liberal it may be, 
it must be projected upon the existing order 
of things. "We have not been examining these 
foreign social conditions with that simple curi- 
osity which leads us to look into the social life 
of Eussia as it is depicted in Eussian novels ; 
we have, on the contrary, absorbed them gen- 
eration after generation as part of our intel- 
lectual development, so that the novels and the 
other English literature must have had a vast 
influence in moulding our mental character, in 
shaping our thinking upon the political as well 
as the social constitution of states. 

For a long time the one American counter- 
action, almost the only, to this English influ- 
ence was the newspaper, which has always 
kept alive and diffused a distinctly American 
spirit — not always lovel}^ or modest, but na- 



ENGLAND 231 

tional. The establishment of periodicals which 
could afford to pay for fiction written about 
our society and from the American point of 
view has had a great effect on our literary 
emancipation. The wise men whom we elect 
to make our laws — and who represent us in- 
tellectually and morally a good deal better 
than we sometimes like to admit — have al- 
ways gone upon the theory'-, with regard to 
the reading for the American people, that the 
chief requisite of it was cheapness, with no re- 
gard to its character so far as it is a shaper 
of notions about government and social life. 
What educating influence English fiction was 
having upon American life they have not in- 
quired, so long as it was furnished cheap, and 
its authors were cheated out of any copyright 
on it. 

At the North, thanks to a free press and 
periodicals, to a dozen reform agitations, and 
to the intellectual stir generally accompanying 
industries and commerce, we have been devel- 
oping an immense intellectual activity, a por- 
tion of which has found expression in fiction, 
in poetry, in essays, that are instinct with 
American life and aspiration ; so that now for 
over thirty years, in the field of literature, 
we have had a vigorous offset to the English 



323 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

intellectual domination of which I spoke. 
How far this has in the past moulded Ameri- 
can thought and sentiment, in what degree it 
should be held responsible for the infidelity in 
regard to our ''American experiment," I will 
not undertake to say. The South furnishes a 
very interesting illustration in this connection. 
When the civil war broke down the barriers 
of intellectual non- intercourse behind which 
the South had ensconced itself, it was found 
to be in a colonial condition. Its libraries 
were English libraries, mostly composed of 
old English literature. Its literary growth 
stopped with the reign of George III. Its 
latest news was the /Si)eetator and the Tatler. 
The social order it covered was that of mo- 
narchical England, undisturbed by the fiery 
philippics of Byron or Shelley or the radical- 
ism of a manufacturing age. Its chivalry was 
an imitation of the antiquated age of lords 
and ladies, and tournaments, and buckram cour- 
tesies, when men were as touchy to fight, at 
the lift of an eyelid or the drop of a glove, as 
Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and as ready for a 
drinking-bout as Christopher ]!^orth. The 
intellectual stir of the North, with its disor- 
ganizing radicalism, was rigorously excluded, 
and with it all the new life pouring out of 



ENGLAND 223 

its presses. The South was tied to a repub- 
lic, but it was not repubhcan, either iu its pol- 
itics or its social order. It was, in its mental 
constitution, in its prejudices, in its tastes, ex- 
actly what you would expect a people to be, 
excluded from the circulation of free ideas by 
its system of slavery, and fed on the English 
literature of a century ago. I dare say that 
a majority of its reading public, at any time, 
would have preferred a monarchical system 
and a hierarchy of rank. 

To return to England. I have said that Eng- 
lish domination usually carries the best ele- 
ments of civilization. Yet it must be owned 
that England has pursued her magnificent 
career in a policy often insolent and brutal, 
and generally selfish. Scarcely any consider- 
ations have stood in the way of her trade and 
profit. I will not dwell upon her opium cult- 
ure in India, which is a proximate cause of 
famine in district after district, nor upon her 
forcing the drug upon China — a policy dis- 
graceful to a Christian queen and people. AV'c 
have only just got rid of slavery, sustained so 
long by Biblical and olHcial sanction, and may 
not yet set up as critics. But I will refer to a 
case with which all are familiar — Enghind's 
treatment of her American colonies. In 17G0 



224 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

and onward, when Franklin, the agent of the 
colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, 
was cooling his heels in lords' waiting-rooms 
in London, America was treated exactly as 
Ireland Avas — that is, discriminated against in 
every way ; not allowed to manufacture ; not 
permitted to trade with other nations, except 
under the most vexatious restrictions; and 
the effort was continued to make her a mere 
agricultural producer and a dependent. All 
that England cared for us was that we should 
be a market for her manufactures. This same 
selfishness has been the key-note of her policy 
down to the present day, except as the force 
of circumstances has modified it. Steadily 
pursued, it has contributed largely to make 
England the monetary and industrial master 
of the world. 

With this outline I pass to her present con- 
dition and outlook. 

The dictatorial and selfish policy has been 
forced to give way somewhat in regard to 
the colonies. The spirit of the age and the 
strength of the colonies forbid its exercise; 
they cannot be held by the old policy. x\us- 
tralia boldly adopts a protective tariff, and 
her parliament is only nominall}^ controlled 
by the crown. Canada exacts duties on Eng- 



ENGLAND 335 

lish goods, and England cannot help herself. 
Even with these concessions, can England 
keep her great colonies ? They are still loyal 
in word. They still affect English manners 
and. English speech, and draw their intellect- 
ual supplies from England. On the prospect 
of a war with Russia they nearly all offered 
volunteers. But everybody knows that alle- 
giance is on the condition of local autonomy. 
If united Canada asks to go, she will go. So 
with Australia. It may be safely predicted 
that England will never fight again to hold 
the sovereignty of her new-world possessions 
against their present occupants. And, in the 
judgment of many good observers, a dissolu- 
tion of the empire, so far as the Western col- 
onies are concerned, is inevitable, unless Great 
Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin, 
becomes an imperial federation, with parlia- 
ments distinct and independent, the crown the 
only bond of union — the crown, and not the 
Enghsh parliament, being the titular and act- 
ual sovereign. Sovereign power over Amer- 
ica in the parliament Franklin never would 
admit. His idea was that all the inhabitants 
of the empire must bo citizens, not some of 
them subjects ruled by the home citizens. 
The two great political parties of England 



336 KKLATION OK I-ITKRATUKE TO LIFK 

aro vojilly fonnod on linos constructiHl after 
tho passage of the Ivofonu Hill of 18;VJ. The 
Tories had been long in power. They had 
made many ehanges and popular eoncossions, 
but they resisted parliamentary reform. The 
great "Whig lords, who had tried to govern 
Enghxnd without the people and in opposition 
to the i^rown in the days of George 111., had 
learned to seek popular support. The Keform 
Bill, tvhieh was ultimately forced through by 
popular pressure and threat of civil war, abol- 
ished the rotten boroughs, gave representa- 
tion to the large manufacturing towns and in- 
creased representation to the counties, and the 
suffrage to all men who had paid ten pounds a 
year rent in boroughs, or in tlie counties owned 
land worth ten pounds a year or paid lifty 
pounds rent. The immediate result of this 
Avas to put power into the hands of the mid- 
dle classes and to give the lower classes high 
hopes, so that, in IS;'0, the Chartist movement 
began, one demand of which was univei*sal 
sutfrage. The old party names of AVhig and 
Tory had been dropped and the two parties 
had assumed their present appellations of Con- 
servatives and liberals. Both parties had, 
however, learned that tliere was no i*est for 
any ruling party except a popular basis, and 



ENGLAND 237 

tlio Consorvativo ])jirty luid tho *r(HH[ scjiiso to 
strcnfrthon itsoll" in 1807 by carryin*^^ through 
Mr. Disraeli's bill, which gave the IVanchiHo 
in boroughs to all householders paying rates, 
and in counties to all occupiers of property 
rated at lifteen ])ounds a year. This broaden- 
ing of the Hulfragc places the power irrevo- 
cably in the hands of the people;, against 
whose judgment neither crown nor ministry 
can venture on any important step. 

In general terms it may be said that of these 
two great parties the Conservative wishes to 
preserve existing institutions, and latterly has 
loaned to the prerogatives of the crown, and 
the Liberal is inclined to progress and reform, 
and to respond to changes demanded by the 
people. Both parties, however, like parties 
elsewhere, propose and oppose measures and 
movements, and accept or reject policies, sim- 
ply to get olRce or keep oilice. The Conserv- 
ative party of late years, principally because 
it has the simple task of holding back, has 
been better able to define its lincis and preserve 
a compact organization. The Liberals, with 
a multitude of reformatory projects, have, of 
course, a less homogeneous organization, and 
for some years have been without well-defined 
issues. The Conservative aristocracy seemed 



22S KEI^VTION OF LITEl^ATUKE TO LIFE 

to form a secure alliance with the farmers and 
the great agricultnriil interests, and at the 
same time to have a strong hold upon the 
lower classes. In what his opponents called 
his '' policy of adventure/' Lord Beaconslield 
had the support of the lower populace. The 
Liberal party is an incongruous host. On one 
wing are the AYliig lords and great land-own- 
ers, who cannot be expected to take kindly 
to a land reform that would reform them out 
of territorial power ; and on the other wing 
are the Radiciils, who would abolish the pi*es- 
ent land system and the crown itself, and in- 
stitute the rule of a democracy. Between 
these two is the great body of the middle 
class, a considerable portion of the educated 
and universit}^ trained, the majorities of the 
manufacturing towns, and perhaps, we may 
say, generalh^ the ^Nonconformists. There are 
some curious analogies in these two parties to 
our own parties before the war. It is, perhaps, 
not fanciful to suppose that the Conservative 
lords resemble our own aristocratic leaders of 
democracy, who contrived to keep near the 
people and had affiliations that secured them 
the vote of the least educated portion of the 
voters ; while the great Liberal lords are not 
unlike our old aristocratic Whigs, of the cotton 



ENGLAND 229 

order, who have either little sympathy with 
the people or little faculty of showing' it. It 
is a curious fact that during our civil war re- 
spect for authority gained us as much sym- 
pathy from the Conservatives, as love for 
freedom (hampered by the greed of trade and 
rivalry in manufactures) gained us from the 
Liberals. 

To return to the question of empire. The 
bulk of the Conservative party would hold the 
colonies if possible, and pursue an imperial 
policy ; while certainly a large portion of the 
Liberals — not all, by any means — would let 
the colonies go, and, with the Manchester 
school, hope to hold England's place by free- 
trade and active competition. The imperial 
policy may be said to have two branches, in 
regard to which parties will not sharply di- 
vide : one is the relations to be held towards 
the Western colonies, and the other in the pol- 
icy to be pursued in the East in reference to 
India and to the development of the Indian 
empire, and also the policy of aggression and 
subjection in South Africa. 

An imperial policy does not necessarily 
imply such vagaries as the forcible detention 
of the forcibly annexed Boer republic. But 
everybody sees that the time is near when 



9S0 RELATION OF IJTKUATUllE TO LIFE 

England ninst say dotinitely as to the imperial 
poliey generally whether it will pnrsue it or 
abandon it. And it may be remarked in pass- 
ing that the Gladstone government, thns far, 
tliongh pnrsning this policy more moderately 
than the Beaeonstleld government, shows no 
intention of abandoning it. Almost every- 
body admits that if it is abandoned England 
must sink to the position of a third-rate power 
like Holland. For what does abandonment 
mean i It meAUs to have no weight, except 
that of moral example, in Continental atfairs : 
to relinquish her advantages in the Mediter- 
raneiin ; to let Turkey be absorbed by Eussia ; 
to become so weak in India as to risk rebel- 
lion of all the provinces, and probable attack 
from Russia and her Central Asian allies. But 
this is not all. Lost control in Asia is lost 
trade ; this is evident in every foot of control 
Russia has gained in the Caucasus, about the 
Caspian Sea, in Pei*sia. Thei*e Russian manu- 
factures supplant the English ; and so in an- 
other quarter: in order to enjoy the vast 
opening trade of Africa^ England must be on 
hand with an exhibition of power. AVo might 
show by a hundred examples that the imperial 
idea in England does not rest on pride alone, 
on national ^lory altogether, though that is 



ENGLAND 231 

a largo element in it, but on trade instincts. 
" Trade follows the Hag " is a well - known 
motto ; and that means that the lines of com- 
merce follow the limits of empire. 

Take India as an illustration. Why should 
England care to keep India? In the last 
forty years the total revenue from India, set 
down up to 1880 as £1,517,000,000, has been 
£53,000,000 less than the expenditure. It 
varies with the years, and occasionally the 
balance is favorable, as in 1879, when the ex- 
penditure was £()3,-100,000 and the revenue 
was £()1:,1:00,000. But to offset this average 
deficit the very profitable trade of India, which 
is mostly in British hands, swells the national 
wealth ; and this trade would not be so largely 
in British hands if the flag were away. 

But this is not the only value of India. 
Grasp on India is part of the vast Oriental 
network of English trade and commerce, the 
carrying trade, the supply of cotton and iron 
goods. This largely depends upon English 
prestige in the Orient, and to lose India is 
to lose the grip. On practically the same 
string with India are Egypt, Central Africa, 
and the Euphrates valley. A vast empire of 
trade opens out. To sink the imperial policy 
is to shut this vision. With Eussia pressing 



232 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

on one side and America competing on the 
other, England cannot afford to lose her mil- 
itary lines, her control of the sea, her ]3res- 
tige. 

Again, India offers to the young and the 
adventurous a career, military, civil, or com- 
mercial. This is of great weight — great social 
weight. One of the chief wants of England 
to-day is careers and professions for her sons. 
The population of the United Kingdom in 1876 
was estimated at near thirty-four millions ; in 
the last few decades the decennial increase had 
been considerably over two millions ; at that 
rate the population in 1900 would be near 
forty millions. How can they live in their 
narrow limits ? They must emigrate, go for 
good, or seek employment and means of wealth 
in some such vast field as India. Take away 
India now, and you cut off the career of 
hundreds of thousands of j^oung Englishmen, 
and the hope of tens of thousands of house- 
holds. 

There is another aspect of the case which it 
would be unfair to ignore. Opportunity is the 
measure of a nation's responsibility. I have 
no doubt that Mr. Thomas Hughes spoke for 
a very respectable portion of Christian Eng- 
land, in 1861, when he wrote Mr. James Eus- 



ENGLAND 233 

sell Lowell, in a prefatory note to Tom Brown 
at Oxford^ these words : 

* ' The great tasks of the world are only laid on the 
strongest shoulders. We, who have India to guide 
and train, who have for our task the educating of her 
wretched people into free men, who feel that the work 
cannot be shifted from ourselves, and must be done as 
God would have it done, at the peril of England's own 
life, can and do feel for you." 

It is safe, we think, to say that if the British 
Empire is to be dissolved, disintegration cannot 
be permitted to begin at home. Ireland has 
always been a thorn in the side of England. 
And the policy towards it could not have been 
much worse, either to impress it with a respect 
for authority or to win it by conciliation; it 
has been a strange mixture of untimely con- 
cession and untimely cruelty. The problem, in 
fact, has physical and race elements that make 
it almost insolvable. A water-logged country, 
of which nothing can surely be predicted but 
the uncertainty of its harvests, inhabited by a 
people of most peculiar mental constitution, 
alien in race, temperament, and religion, hav- 
ing scarcely one point of sympathy with the 
English. But geography settles some things 
in this world, and the act of union that bound 
Ireland to the United Kino^dom in 1800 was 



334 RELATION OF LITEKATURE TO LIFE 

as much a necessity of the situation as the act 
of union that obliterated the boundary line 
between Scotland and England in 1707. The 
Irish parliament was confessedly a faihire, and 
it is scarceh" within the possibilities that the 
experiment will be tried again. Irish inde- 
pendence, so far as English consent is con- 
cerned, and until England's power is utterh^ 
broken, is a dream. Great changes will doubt- 
less be made in the tenure and transfer of 
land, and these changes will react upon Eng- 
land to the ultimate abasement of the landed 
aristocracy ; but this equalization of conditions 
would work no consent to separation. The 
undeniable growth of the democratic spirit in 
England can no more be relied on to bring it 
about, when we remember what renewed ex- 
ecutive vigor and cohesion existed with the 
Commonwealth and the liery foreign policy of 
the first republic of France. For three years 
past wo have seen the British Empire in peril 
on all sides, with the addition of depression 
and incipient rebellion at home, but her hori- 
zon is not as dark as it was in 17S0, when, 
with a failing cause in America, England had 
the whole of Europe against her. 

In any estimate of the prospects of Eng- 
land we must take into account the recent 



ENGI^ND 235 

marked changes in the social condition. Mr. 
Escott has an instructive chapter on this in 
liis excellent book on Enghind. He notices 
tliat the English character is losing its insu- 
larity, is more accessible to foreign influences, 
and is adopting foreign, especially French, 
modes of living. Country life is losing its 
charm; domestic life is changed; people live 
in *' flats" more and more, and tlie idea of 
home is not what it was ; marriage is not 
exactly what it was; the increased free and 
independent relations of the sexes are some- 
what demoralizing ; women are a little intoxi- 
cated with their newly-acquired freedom ; so- 
cial scandals are more frequent. It should be 
said, however, that perhaps the present perils 
are due not to the new system, but to the fact 
that it is new ; when the novelty is worn off 
the peril ma}^ cease. 

Mr. Escott notices primogeniture as one of 
the stable and, curious enough, one of the dem- 
ocratic institutions of society. It is owing to 
primogeniture that while there is a nobility 
in England there is no noblesse. If titles and 
lands went to all the children there Avould bo 
the multitudinous noblesse of the Continent. 
Now, by primogeniture, enough is retained for 
a small nobility, but all the younger sons must 



286 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

go into the world and make a living. The 
three respectable professions no longer offer 
suflficient inducement, and they crowd more 
and more into trade. Thus the middle class is 
constantly recruited from the upper. Besides, 
the upper is all the time recruited from the 
-wealthy middle ; the union of aristocracy and 
plutocracy may be said to be complete. But 
merit makes its way continually from even the 
lower ranks upward, in the professions, in the 
army, the law, the church, in letters, in trade, 
and, what Mr. Escott does not mention, in the 
reformed civil service, newly opened to the 
humblest lad in the land. Thus there is con- 
stant movement up and doAvn in social Eng- 
land, approaching, except in the traditional 
nobility, the freedom of movement in our own 
countiy. This is all wholesome and sound. 
Even the nobility itself, driven by e?inui, or a 
loss of former political control, or by the ne- 
cessity of more money to support inherited es- 
tates, goes into business, into journalism, writes 
books, enters the professions. 

What are the symptoms of decay in Eng- 
land? Unless the accumulation of Avealth is 
a symptom of decay, I do not see man}^ I 
look at the people themselves. It seems to 
me that never in their history were they more 



ENGLAND 237 

full of vigor. See what travellers, explorers, 
adventurers they are. See what sportsmen, 
in every part of the globe, how much they 
endure, and how hale and jolly they are — 
women as well as men. The race, certainly, 
has not decayed. And look at letters. It may 
be said that this is not the age of pure litera- 
ture — and I'm sure I hope the English pat- 
ent for producing machine novels will not 
be infringed — but the English language was 
never before written so vigorously, so clearly, 
and to such purpose. And this is shown even 
in the excessive refinement and elaboration 
of trifles, the minutia of reflection, the keen- 
ness of analysis, the unrelenting pursuit of 
every social topic into subtleties untouched 
by the older essayists. And there is still more 
vigor, without affectation, in scientific inves- 
tigation, in the daily conquests made in the 
realm of social economy, the best methods of 
living and getting the most out of life. Art 
also keeps pace with luxury, and shows abun- 
dant life and promise for the future. 

I believe, from these and other consider- 
ations, that this vigorous people will find a 
way out of its present embarrassment, and a 
way out without retreating. For myself, I 
like to see the English sort of civilization 



238 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

spreading over the world rather than the 
Eussian or the French. I hope England will 
hang on to the East, and not give it over to 
the havoc of squabbling tribes, with a dozen 
religions and five hundred dialects, or to the 
military despotism of an empire whose moral- 
ity is only matched by the superstition of its 
religion. 

The relations of England and the United 
States are naturally of the first interest to us. 
Our love and our hatred have always been 
that of true relatives. For three-quarters of a 
centur}^ our amour j^'oj^re was constantly kept 
raw by the most supercilious patronage. Dur- 
ing the past decade, when the quality of Eng- 
land's regard has become more and more a 
matter of indifference to us, we have been 
the subject of a more intelligent curiosity, of 
increased respect, accompanied with a sin- 
cere desire to understand us. In the diplo- 
matic scale Washington still ranks below the 
Sublime Porte, but tliis anomaly is due to 
tradition, and does not represent England's 
real estimate of the status of the republic. 
There is, and must be, a good deal of selfish- 
ness mingled in our friendship — patriotism 
itself being a form of selfishness — but our 
ideas of civilization so nearly coincide, and 



ENGLAND 239 

Tve have so many common aspirations for 
humanity that we must draw nearer together, 
notwithstanding old grudges and present dif- 
ferences in social structure. Our intercourse 
is likely to be closer, our business relations 
will become more inseparable. I can conceive 
of nothing so lamentable for the progress of 
the world as a quarrel between these two 
English-speaking people. 

But, in one respect, we are likely to diverge. 
I refer to literature; in that, assimilation 
is neither probable nor desirable. We were 
brought up on the literature of England ; our 
first efforts were imitations of it; we were 
criticised — Ave criticised ourselves — on its 
standards. "We compared every new aspirant 
in letters to some English writer. We were 
patted on the back if we resembled the Eng- 
lish models ; we were stared at or sneered at if 
we did not. When we began to produce some- 
thing that was the product of our own soil and 
our own social conditions, it was still judged 
by the old standards, or, if it was too original 
for that, it was only accepted because it was 
curious or bizarre, interesting for its oddity. 
The criticism that we received for our best 
was evidently founded on such indifference or 
toleration that it was galling. At first we 



$40 KKLAllON OF LITKKATUKK l\> UIFK 

woro surprised; thou wo Avoro grieved; then 
wo woro iudiguaut. AVo have loug ago ooased 
to be either surprised, grieved, or indiguaut 
at anything the English oritios siiv of us. We 
have ivooveroil inir bahince. Wo know that 
since C^ulliver there hi\s boon no piece of 
original humor pivduced in Enghuul e<]ual to 
7uu\*^v/'^H'Av/'V -.Vtfr Vork : that not in this 
century has any Englisli writer e<iualled the 
wit and satii\> of the J>4i/low i\i/>f^/\s\ AVo 
used to bo irritated at what we called the 
suoblnshness of English critics of a certain 
school ; we are so no longer, for we see that 
it^ criticism is only the result of ignorance — 
simply of inability to understand. 

And we the nioiv readily panlon it, because 
of the inability we have to understand Eng- 
lish conditions, and the English dialect, which 
has more and more diverged frvmi the lan- 
guage as it w^as at the time of the separation. 
AVe have so constantly read English litera- 
ture, and kept oui^selves so well informed of 
their social life, as it is exhibited in novels 
and essays, that we are not so much in the 
dark with vegaixl to them as they aiv with 
reganl to us; still we are more and more 
botheroii by the insular dialect. I do not 
propose to criticise it ; it is our misfortune. 



ENGLAND 241 

perhaps our fault, that wo do not understand 
it ; and I only refer to it to say that we should 
not bo too hard on the Saturday liemew 
critio when ho is complaining of the American 
dialect in the English that Mr. Jlowells writes. 
How can the Englishman he expected to come 
into sympathy with the fiction that has New 
England for its subject — from Hawthorne's 
down to that of our present novelists — when 
ho is ignorant of the Avhole background on 
which it is cast ; when all the social conditions 
are an enigma to him; when, if he has, his- 
torically, some conception of Puritan society, 
ho cannot have a glimmer of comprehension 
of the subtle modifications and changes it has 
undergone in a century? When he visits 
America and sees it, it is a puzzle to him. 
How, then, can he be expected to comprehend 
it when it is depicted to the life in books ? 

No, wo must expect a continual divergence 
in our literatures. And it is best that there 
should be. There can bo no development of 
a nation's literature worth anything that is 
not on its own lines, out of its own native 
materials. We must not expect that the Eng- 
lish will understand that literature that ex- 
presses our national life, character, conditions, 
any better than they understand that of the 



243 RELATION OK UTEKATlTIiK TO LTFE 

Fronch or of tho Germans. And, on our part, 
tho day has conio when wo receive their liter- 
ary elTorts with the same respectful desire to 
1)0 pleiised with them that wo have to like 
their dress and their speech. 

(1882.) 



TUB ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DUUING 
THE LATE INVASION 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING 
THE LATE INVASION 

The most painful event since the bombard- 
ment of Alexandria has been what is called 
by an English writer the "invasion" of 
"American Literature in England." The 
hostile forces, with an advanced guard of 
what was regarded as an " awkward squad," 
had been gradually effecting a landing and a 
lodgment not unwelcome to the unsuspicious 
natives. No alarm was taken when they 
threw out a skirmish -line of magazines and 
began to deploy an occasional wild poet, who 
advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver in 
hand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad 
in the picturesque robes of the sunset. But 
when the main body of American novelists 
got fairly ashore and into position the literary 
militia of the island rose up as one man, with 
the strength of a thousand, to repel the in- 
vaders and sweep them back across the At- 
lantic. The spectacle had a dramatic interest. 



246 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

The invaders were not numerous, did not 
carry their native tomahawks, they had been 
careful to wash off the frightful paint with 
which they usually go into action, the}^ did 
not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and 
even the militia regarded them as on the 
whole "amusin' young 'possums" — and yet 
all the resources of modern and ancient war- 
fare were brought to bear upon them. There 
was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, 
a lively fusillade of small -arms in the as- 
tonished weeklies, a discharge of point-blank 
blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some 
of the heavy quarterlies loaded up the old 
pieces of ordnance, that had not been charged 
in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and 
junk-bottles, and poured in raking broadsides. 
The effect on the island was something tremen- 
dous : it shook and trembled, and was almost 
hidden in the smoke of the conflict. What 
the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon 
to determine. If any of them survive, it will 
be God's mercy to his weak and innocent 
children. 

It must be said that the American people — 
such of them as were aware of this uprising 
— took the punishment of their presumption 
in a sweet and forgiving spirit. If they did 



TIIK ENULISIl VOLUNTKEliS 247 

not fool that tlicy deserved it, they rof^arded 
it as a valuable contribution to the study of 
sociology and i-aco characteristics, in which 
they have taken a lively interest of late. We 
know how it is ourselves, they said ; we used 
to be thin-skinned and self-conscious and sen- 
sitive. We used to wince and cringe under 
Engllsli criticism, and try to strike back in a 
blind fury. Wo have learned that criticism is 
good for ns, and we are grateful for it from 
any source. Wo have learned that English 
criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warm 
interest in our intellectual development, just 
as English anxiety about our revenue laws is 
based upon a yearning that our down-trodden 
millions shall enjoy the benefits of free-trade. 
AVe did not understand why a country that 
admits our beef and grain and cheese should 
seem to seek protection against a literary 
product which is brought into competition 
with one of the great British sta])les, the 
modern novel. It seemed inconsistent. ]>ut 
Ave are no more consistent ourselves. We 
cannot understand the action of our own Con- 
gress, Avhich protects the American author by 
a round duty on foreign books and refuses 
to protect him by granting a foreign copy- 
right ; or, to ])ut it in another way, is willing 



348 KELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

to steal the brains of the foreign author un- 
der the plea of free knowledge, but taxes free 
knowledge in another form. "We have no de- 
fence to make of the state of international 
copyright, though we appreciate the compli- 
cation of the matter in the conflicting inter- 
ests of English and American publishers. 

Yes ; we must insist that, under the circum- 
stances, the American people have borne this 
outburst of English criticism in an admirable 
spirit. It was as unexpected as it was sud- 
den, l^ow, for many years our internation- 
al relations have been uncommonly smooth, 
oiled every few days by complimentary ban- 
quet speeches, and sweetened by abundance 
of magazine and newspaper "taify." Some- 
thing too much of " taffy " we have thought 
was given us at times, for, in getting bigger 
in various ways, we have grown more modest. 
Though our English admirers may not believe 
it, we see our own faults more clearly than 
we once did — thanks, partly, to the faith- 
ful castigations of our friends — and we some- 
times find it difficult to conceal our blushes 
when we are over-praised. We fancied that 
we were going on, as an English writer on 
" Down-Easters " used to say, as " slick as ile," 
when this miniature tempest suddenly burst 



THE ENGLISH VOLTJNTEEES 249 

out in a revival of the language and methods 
used in the redoubtable old English periodicals 
forty years ago. We were interested in seeing 
how exactly this sort of criticism that slew 
our literary fathers was revived now for the 
execution of their degenerate children. And 
yet it was not exactly the same. We used to 
call it "slang-whanging." One form of it 
was a blank surprise at the pretensions of 
American authors, and a dismissal with the 
formula of previous ignorance of their exist- 
ence. This is modified now by a modest 
expression of "discomfiture" on reading of 
American authors " whose very names, much 
less peculiarities, we never heard of before." 
This is a tribunal from which there is no 
appeal. 'Not to have been heard of by an 
Enghshman is next door to annihilation. It 
is at least discouraging to an author who may 
think he has gained some reputation over 
what is now conceded to be a considerable 
portion of the earth's surface, to be cast into 
total obscurity by the negative damnation of 
English ignorance. There is to us something 
pathetic in this and in the surprise of the 
English critic, that there can be any standard 
of respectable achievement outside of a seven- 
miles radius turning on Charing Cross. 



250 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

The pathetic aspect of the case has not, 
however, we are sorry to say, struck the 
American press, which has too often treated 
with unbecoming levity this unaccountable 
exhibition of English sensitiveness. There 
has been little reply to it ; at most, generally 
only an amused report of the war, and now 
and then a discriminating acceptance of some 
of the criticism as just, with a friendly recog- 
nition of the fact that on the whole the critic 
had done very well considering the limitation 
of his knowledge of the subject on which he 
wrote. What is certainly noticeable is an 
entire absence of the irritation that used to 
be caused by similar comments on America 
thirty years ago. Perhaps the Americans are 
reserving their fire as their ancestors did at 
Bunker Hill, conscious, maybe, that in the 
end they will be driven out of their slight 
literary intrenchments. Perhaps they were 
disarmed by the fact that the acrid criticism 
in the London Quarterly Review was ac- 
companied by a cordial appreciation of the 
novels that seemed to the reviewer charac- 
teristically American. The interest in the 
latter's review of our poor field must be lan- 
guid, however, for nobody has taken the 
trouble to remind its author that Brockden 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS 251 

Brown — who is cited as a typical American 
writer, true to local character, scenery, and 
color — put no more flavor of American life 
and soil in his books than is to be found in 
Frankenstein. 

It does not, I should suppose, lie in the w^ay 
of The Century, whose general audience on 
both sides of the Atlantic takes only an amused 
interest in this singular revival of a traditional 
literary animosity — an anachronism in these 
tolerant days when the reading world cares 
less and less about the origin of literature that 
pleases it — it does not lie in the way of The 
Centicry to do more than report this phenom- 
enal literary effervescence. And yet it cannot 
escape a certain responsibility as an immediate 
though innocent occasion of this exhibition of 
international courtesy, because its last ]!^ovem- 
ber number contained some papers that seem 
to have been irritating. In one of them Mr. 
HoweUs let fall some chance remarks on 
the tendency of modern fiction, without ad- 
equately developing his theory, which were 
largely dissented from in this country, and 
were like the uncorking ox six vials in Eng- 
land. The other was an essay on England, 
dictated by admiration for the achievements 
of the foremost nation of our time, which, 



252 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

from the awkwardness of the eulogist, was 
unfortunately the uncorking of the seventh 
vial — an uncorking which, as we happen to 
know, so prostrated the writer that he resolved 
never to attempt to praise England again. 
His panic was somewhat allayed by the 
soothing remark in a kindly paper in Black- 
wood's Magazine for January, that the writer 
had discussed his theme " by no means unfair- 
ly or disrespectfully." But wath a shudder 
he recognized what a peril he had escaped. 
Great Scott ! — the reference is to a local Amer- 
ican deity who is invoked in war, and not to 
the Biblical commentator — what would have 
happened to him if he had spoken of England 
" disrespectfully " ! 

We gratefully acknowledge also the remark 
of the Blackwood writer in regard to the 
claims of America in literature. "These 
claims," he says, " we have hitherto been very 
charitable to." How our life depends upon 
a continual exhibition by the critics of this 
divine attribute of charity it would perhaps be 
unw^ise in us to confess. "We can at least take 
courage that it exists — who does not need it in 
this world of misunderstandings? — since w^e 
know that charity is not puffed up, vaunt- 
eth not itself, hopeth all things, endureth all 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS 253 

things, is not easily provoked ; whether there 
be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish ; but charity never 
faileth. And when all our "dialects" on 
both sides of the water shall vanish, and we 
shall speak no more Yorkshire or Cape Cod, 
or London cockney or " Pike " or " Cracker " 
vowel flatness, nor write them any more, but 
all use the noble simphcity of the ideal Eng- 
lish, and not indulge in such odd - sounding 
phrases as this of our critic that " the comba- 
tants on both sides were by way of detesting 
each other," though we speak with the tongues 
of men and of angels — we shall still need 
charity. 

It will occur to the charitable that the 
Americans are at a disadvantage in this little 
international " tiff." For while the offenders 
have inconsiderately written over their own 
names, the others preserve a privileged ano- 
nymity. Any attempt to reply to these voices 
out of the dark reminds one of the famous 
duel between the Englishman and the French- 
man which took place in a pitch-dark cham- 
ber, with the frightful result that when the 
tender-hearted Englishman discharged his re- 
volver up the chimney he brought down his 
man. One never can tell in a case of this 



254 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

kind but a charitable shot might bring down 
a valued friend or even a peer of the realm. 

In all soberness, however, and setting aside 
the open question, which country has most 
diverged from the English as it was at the 
time of the separation of the colonies from the 
mother-land, we may be permitted a word or 
two in the hope of a better understanding. 
The offence in Tlie Century paper on " Eng- 
land" seems to have been in phrases such as 
these : " When we began to produce something 
that was the product of our own soil and of 
our own social conditions, it was still judged 
by the old standards;" and, we are no lon- 
ger irritated by " the snobbishness of English 
critics of a certain school," " for we see that 
its criticism is only the result of ignorance — 
simply of inability to understand." 

Upon this the reviewer affects to lose his 
respiration, and with " a gasp of incredulity " 
wants to know what the writer means, " and 
what standards he proposes to himself when 
he has given up the English ones ?" The re- 
viewer makes a more serious case than the 
writer intended, or than a fair construction of 
the context of his phrases warrants. It is the 
criticism of " a certain school " only that was 
said to be the result of ignorance. It is not 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS 255 

the English language nor its body of enduring 
literature — the noblest monument of our com- 
mon civilization — that the writer objected to 
as a standard of our performances. The stand- 
ard objected to is the narrow insular one (the 
term " insular " is used purely as a geographical 
one) that measures life, social conditions, feel- 
ing, temperament, and national idiosyncrasies 
expressed in our literature by certain fixed 
notions prevalent in England. Probably also 
the expression of national peculiarities would 
diverge somewhat from the " old standards." 
All we thought of asking was that allowance 
should be made for this expression and these 
peculiarities, as it would be made in case of 
other literatures and peoples. It might have 
occurred to our critics, we used to think, to 
ask themselves whether the English literature 
is not elastic enough to permit the play of 
forces in it which are foreign to their experi- 
ence. Genuine literature is the expression, 
we take it, of life — and truth to that is the 
standard of its success. Eeference was in- 
tended to this, and not to the common canons 
of literary art. But we have given up the ex- 
pectation that the English critic " of a certain 
school " will take this view of it, and this is the 
plain reason — not intended to be offensive — 



256 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

why much of the English criticism has ceased 
to be highly valued in this countiy, and why 
it has ceased to annoy. At the same time, it 
ought to be added, English opinion, when it is 
seen to be based upon knowledge, is as high- 
ly respected as ever. And nobody in America, 
so far as we know, entertains, or ever enter- 
tained, the idea of setting aside as standards 
the master-minds in British literature. 

In regard to the " inability to understand," 
we can, perhaps, make oui'selves more clear- 
ly understood, for the BlacA'wood's reviewer 
has kindl^^ furnished us an illustration in this 
very paper, when he passes in patronizing re- 
view the novels of Mr. Ilowells. In discuss- 
ing the character of Lydia Blood, in T/te 
Lady of the Aroostook, he is exceedingly puz- 
zled by the fact that a girl from rural New 
England, brought up amid sorroundings home- 
ly in the extreme, should have been considered 
a lady. He says : 

" Tlic reall}'- 'American thing' in it is, we think, quite 
undiscovered either by the author or his heroes, and that 
is the curious confusion of classes which attributes to a 
girl brought up on the humblest level all the prejudices 
and necessities of the highest society. Granting that 
there was anj^thing dreadful in it, the daughter of a 
homely small farmer in England is not guarded and ac- 
companied like a young lady on her journeys from one 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS 257 

place to another. Probably her mother at home would be 
disturbed, like Lydia's aunt, at the thought that there 
■was no woman on board, in case her child should be ill or 
lonely ; but, as for any impropriety, would never think 
twice on that subject. The difference is that the Eng- 
lish girl would not be a young lady. She would find her 
sweetheart among the sailors, and would have nothing to 
say to the gentlemen. This difference is far more curious 
than the misadventure, which might have happened any- 
where, and far more remarkable than the fact that the 
gentlemen did behave to her like gentlemen, and did their 
best to set her at ease, which we hope would have happen- 
ed anywhere else. But it is, we think, exclusively Amer- 
ican, and very curious and interesting, that this young 
woman, with her antecedents so distinctly set before us, 
should be represented as a lady, not at all out of place 
among her cultivated companions, and ready to become 
an ornament of society the moment she lands in Venice." 



Reams of writing could not more clearly 
explain what is meant by " inability to un- 
derstand " American conditions and to judge 
fairly the literature growing out of them ; and 
reams of writing would be wasted in the at- 
tempt to make our curious critic comprehend 
the situation. There is nothing in his expe- 
rience of "farmers' daughters" to give him 
the key to it. We might tell him that his no- 
tion of a farmer's daughters in England does 
not apply to New England. We might tell 
him of a sort of society of which he has no 

17 



258 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

conception and can have none, of fai'mers' 
daughters and farmers' wives in ISTew Eng- 
land — more numerous, let us confess, thirty 
or forty years ago than now — who lived in 
homely conditions, dressed with plainness, and 
followed the fashions afar off ; did their own 
houselvold work, even the menial parts of 
it; cooked the meals for the "men folks'' 
and the "hired help," made the butter and 
cheese, and performed their half of the labor 
that wruno^ an honest but not luxurious liv- 
iniT from the reluctant soil. And yet those 
women — the sweet and gracious ornaments 
of a self-respecting society — were full of 
spirit, of modest pride in their position, were 
familiar with much good literature, could con- 
verse with piquancy and understanding on 
subjects of general interest, were trained in the 
subtleties of a solid theology, and bore them- 
selves in any compan}- with that traditional 
breeding which we associate with the name of 
lady. Such strong native sense had they, such 
innate refinement and courtesy — the product, 
it used to be said, of plain living and high 
thinking — that, ignorant as they might be of 
civic ways, they would, upon being introduced 
to them, need only a brief space of time to 
" orient " themselves to the new circumstances. 



THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS 259 

Much more of this sort might be said without 
exaggeration. To us there is nothing incon- 
gruous in the supposition that Lydia Blood 
was " ready to become an ornament to society 
tlie moment she lands in Yenice." 

But we lack the missionary spirit necessary 
to the exertion to make our interested critic 
comprehend such a social condition, and we 
prefer to leave ourselves to his charity, in the 
hope of the continuance of which we rest in 
serenity. 

(1883.) 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON 
SCHOOL 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON 
SCHOOL 

Theee has been a great improvement in the 
physical condition of the people of the United 
States within two generations. This is more 
noticeable in the West than in the East, but 
it is marked everywhere; and the foreign 
traveller who once detected a race deteriora- 
tion, which he attributed to a dry and stim- 
ulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety, 
which was evident in all classes, for a rapid 
change of condition, finds very little now to 
sustain his theory. Although the restless 
energy continues, the mixed race in America 
has certainly changed physically for the bet- 
ter. Speaking generally, the contours of face 
and form are more rounded. The change is 
most marked in regions once noted for lean- 
ness, angularity, and sallowness of complexion, 
but throughout the country the types of phys- 
ical manhood are more numerous; and if 
women of rare and exceptional beauty are not 



264 KELATION OF LITEKATUKE TO LIFE 

more numerous, no doubt the average of come- 
liness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, 
the increase of beauty due to better develop- 
ment has not been at the expense of delicacy 
of complexion and of line, as it has been in 
some European countries. 

Physical well-being is almost entirely a 
matter of nutrition. Something is due in our 
case to the accumulation of money, to the 
decrease in an increasing number of our pop- 
ulation of the daily anxiety about food and 
clothes, to more leisure; but abundant and 
better -prepared food is the direct agency in 
our phj^sical change. Good food is not only 
more abundant and more widely distributed 
than it was two generations ago, but it is to 
be had in immeasurably greater variety. No 
other people existing, or that ever did exist, 
could command such a variety of edible prod- 
ucts for daily consumption as the mass of 
the American people habitually use to-day. 
In consequence they have the opportunity of 
being better nourished than any other people 
ever were. If they are not better nourished, 
it is because their food is badly prepared. 
Whenever we find, either in New England 
or in the South, a community ill-favored, dys- 
peptic, lean, and faded in complexion, we may 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 265 

be perfectly sure that its cooking is bad, and 
that it is too ignorant of the laws of health to 
procure that variety of food which is so easily 
obtainable. People who still diet on sodden 
pie and the products of the frying-pan of the 
pioneers, and then, in order to promote diges- 
tion, attempt to imitate the patient cow by 
masticating some elastic and fragrant gum, 
are doing very little to bring in that universal 
physical health or beauty which is the natural 
heritage of our opportunity. 

IS'ow, what is the relation of our intellectual 
development to this physical improvement? 
It will be said that the general intelligence is 
raised, that the habit of reading is much more 
wide-spread, and that the increase of books, 
periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater 
mental activity than existed formerly. It 
will also be said that the opportunity for edu- 
cation was never before so nearly universal. 
If it is not yet true everywhere that all 
children must go to school, it is true that all 
may go to school free of cost. Without doubt, 
also, great advance has been made in American 
scholarship, in specialized learning and inves- 
tigation; that is to say, the proportion of 
scholars of the first rank in literature and in 
science is much larger to the population than 
a generation ago. 



266 RELATION OF LITEBATUKE TO LIFE 

But what is the relation of our general in- 
tellectual life to popular education? Or, in 
other words, what effect is popular education 
having upon the general intellectual habit and 
taste? There are two ways of testing this. 
One is by observing whether the mass of 
minds is better trained and disciplined than 
formerly, less liable to delusions, better able 
to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely 
to be led away by novelties in speculation, or 
by theories that are unsupported by historic 
evidence or that are contradicted by a knowl- 
edge of human nature. If we were tempted 
to pursue this test, we should be forced to 
note the seeming anomaly of a scientific age 
peculiarly credulous ; the ease with which any 
charlatan finds followers; the common readi- 
ness to fall in with any theory of progress 
which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept 
the wildest notions of social reorganization. 
"We should be obliged to note also, among 
scientific men themselves, a disposition to 
come to conclusions on inadequate evidence 
— a disposition usually due to one-sided edu- 
cation which lacks metaphysical training and 
the philosophic habit. Multitudes of fairly 
intelligent people are afloat without any base- 
line of thought to which they can refer new 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 267 

suggestions; just as many politicians are 
floundering about for want of an apprehen- 
sion of the Constitution of the United States 
and of the historic development of society. 
An honest acceptance of the law of gravita- 
tion would banish many popular delusions; 
a comprehension that something cannot be 
made out of nothing would dispose of others ; 
and the application of the ordinary principles 
of evidence, such as men require to establish 
a title to property, would end most of the re- 
maining. How far is our popular education, 
which we have now enjoyed for two full gen- 
erations, responsible for this state of mind ? 
If it has not encouraged it, has it done much 
to correct it ? 

The other test of popular education is in the 
kind of reading sought and enjoyed by the ma- 
jority of the American people. As the greater 
part of this reading is admitted to be fiction, 
we have before us the relation of the novel to 
the common school. As the common school 
is our universal method of education, and 
the novels most in demand are those least 
worthy to be read, we may consider this sub- 
ject in two aspects : the encouragement, by 
neglect or by teaching, of the taste that de- 
mands this kind of fiction, and the tendency 



268 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

of the novel to become what this taste de- 
mands. 

Before considering the common school, how- 
ever, we have to notice a phenomenon in let- 
ters — namely, the evolution of the modern 
newspaper as a vehicle for general reading- 
matter. Not content with giving the news, 
or even with creating news and increasing its 
sensational character, it grasps at the wider 
field of supplying reading material for the 
million, usurping the place of books and to a 
large extent of periodicals. The effect of this 
new departure in journalism is beginning to 
attract attention. An increasing number of 
people read nothing except the newspapers. 
Consequently, they get little except scraps 
and bits ; no subject is considered thoroughly 
or exhaustively ; and they are furnished with 
not much more than the small change for 
superficial conversation. The habit of exces- 
sive newspaper reading, in which a great 
variety of topics is inadequately treated, has 
a curious effect on the mind. It becomes 
demoralized, gradually loses the power of 
concentration or of continuous thought, and 
even loses the inclination to read the long 
articles which the newspaper prints. The 
eye catches a thousand things, but is detained 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 269 

by no one. Yariety, which in limitations is 
wholesome in literary as well as in physical 
diet, creates dyspepsia when it is excessive, 
and when the literary viands are badly cooked 
and badly served the evil is increased. The 
mind loses the power of discrimination, the 
taste is lowered, and the appetite becomes 
diseased. The effect of this scrappy, desultory 
reading is bad enough when the hashed com- 
pound selected is tolerably good. It becomes 
a very serious matter when the reading itself 
is vapid, frivolous, or bad. The responsibility 
of selecting the mental food for millions of 
people is serious. When, in the last century, 
in England, the Society for the Diffusion of 
Useful Information, which accomplished so 
much good, was organized, this responsibility 
was felt, and competent hands prepared the 
popular books and pamphlets that were cheap 
in price and widely diffused. Now, it hap- 
pens that a hundred thousand people, perhaps 
a million in some cases, surrender the right 
of the all-important selection of the food for 
their minds to some unknown and irresponsi- 
ble person whose business it is to choose the 
miscellaneous reading-matter for a particular 
newspaper. His or her taste may be good, 
or it may be immature and vicious ; it may be 



270 RELATION OF LITEEATUKE TO LIFE 

used simply to create a sensation; and yet 
the million of readers get nothing except what 
this one person chooses they shall read. It is 
an astonishing abdication of individual pref- 
erence. Day after day, Sunday after Sunday, 
they read only what this unknown person 
selects for them. Instead of going to the 
library and cultivating their own tastes, and 
pursuing some subject that will increase their 
mental vigor and add to their permanent stock 
of thought, they fritter away their time upon 
a hash of literature chopped up for them by a 
person possibly very unfit even to make good 
hash. The mere statement of this surrender 
of one's judgment of what shall be his intel- 
lectual life is alarming. 

But the modern newspaper is no doubt a 
natural evolution in our social life. As every- 
thing has a cause, it would be worth while to 
inquire whether the encyclopaedic newspaper 
is in response to a demand, to a taste created 
by our common schools. Or, to put the ques- 
tion in another form, does the system of edu- 
cation in our common schools give the pupils 
a taste for good literature or much power of 
discrimination? Do they come out of school 
with the habit of continuous reading, of read- 
ing books, or only of picking up scraps in the 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 271 

newspapers, as they might snatch a hasty- 
meal at a lunch-counter ? What, in short, do 
the schools contribute to the creation of a 
taste for good literature ? 

Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about 
the modern novel. It is feared that it will 
not be reahstic enough, that it will be too 
realistic, that it will be insincere as to the 
common aspects of life, that it will not suf- 
ficiently idealize life to keep itself within the 
limits of true art. But Avhile the critics are 
busy saying what the novel should be, and 
attacking or defending the fiction of the pre- 
vious age, the novel obeys pretty well the 
laws of its era, and in many ways, especially 
in the variety of its development, represents 
the time. Eegarded simply as a work of art, 
it may be said that the novel should be an ex- 
pression of the genius of its writer conscien- 
tiously applied to a study of the facts of life 
and of human nature, with little reference to 
the audience. Perhaps the great works of art 
that have endured have been so composed. 
We may say, for example, that Don Quixote 
had to create its sympathetic audience. But, 
on the other hand, works of art worthy the 
name are sometimes produced to suit a de- 
mand and to please a taste already created. 



273 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

A great deal of what passes for literature in 
these days is in this category of supply to 
suit the demand, and perhaps it can be said 
of this generation more fitly than of any 
other that the novel seeks to hit the popular 
taste; having become a means of livelihood, 
it must sell in order to be profitable to the 
producer, and in order to sell it must be what 
the reading public want. The demand and sale 
are widely taken as the criterion of excellence, 
or they are at least sufficient encouragement 
of further work on the line of the success. 
This criterion is accepted by the publisher, 
whose business it is to supply a demand. The 
conscientious publisher asks two questions : Is 
the book good ? and Will it sell ? The pub- 
lisher without a conscience asks only one 
question : Will the book sell ? The reflex in- 
fluence of this upon authors is immediately 
felt. 

The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensa- 
tional, and worthless for any purpose of in- 
tellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, 
is thus encouraged in this age as it never was 
before. The making of novels has become a 
process of manufacture. Usually, after the 
fashion of the silk-weavers of Lyons, they are 
made for the central establishment on individ- 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 273 

ual looms at home; but if demand for the 
sort of goods furnished at present continues, 
there is no reason why they should not be 
produced, even more cheaply than they are 
now, in great factories, where there can be 
division of labor and economy of talent. The 
shoal of English novels conscientiously re- 
viewed every seventh day in the London 
weeklies would preserve their present charac- 
ter and gain in firmness of texture if they 
were made by machinery. One has only to 
mark what sort of novels reach the largest 
sale and are most called for in the circulating 
libraries, to gauge pretty accurately the public 
taste, and to measure the influence of this 
taste upon modern production. "With the 
exception of the novel now and then which 
touches some rehgious problem or some social- 
istic speculation or uneasiness, or is a special 
freak of sensationalism, the novels which suit 
the greatest number of readers are those which 
move in a plane of absolute mediocrity, and 
have the slightest claim to be considered 
works of art. They represent the chromo 
stage of development. 

They must be cheap. The almost universal 
habit of reading is a mark of this age— no- 
where else so conspicuous as in America ; and 

18 



274 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

considering the training of this comparatively 
neAV reading public, it is natural that it should 
insist upon cheapness of material, and that it 
should require quality less than quantity. It 
is a note of our general intellectual develop- 
ment that cheapness in literature is almost as 
much insisted on by the rich as by the poor. 
The taste for a good book has not kept pace 
with the taste for a good dinner, and multi- 
tudes who have commendable judgment about 
the table would think it a piece of extrava- 
gance to pay as much for a book as for a din- 
ner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar 
that cost less than a novel. Indeed, we seem 
to be as yet far away from the appreciation 
of the truth that what we put into the mind 
is as important to our well-being as what we 
put into the stomach. 

]^o doubt there are more people capable of 
appreciating a good book, and there are more 
good books read, in this age, than in any 
previous, though the ratio of good judges to 
the nmnber who read is less ; but we are con- 
sidering the vast mass of the reading public 
and its tastes. I say its tastes, and probabl}^ 
this is not unfair, although this travelling, 
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in 
the case of the reading selected in the news- 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 275 

papers, what is most persistently thrust upon 
its attention by the great news agencies, 
which find it most profitable to deal in that 
which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses 
which publish books of merit are at a disad- 
vantage with the distributing agencies. 

Criticism which condemns the common- 
school system as a nurse of superficiality, me- 
diocrity, and conceit does not need serious at- 
tention, any more than does the criticism that 
the universal opportunity of individual wel- 
fare offered by a republic fails to make a per- 
fect government. But this is not saying that 
the common school does all that it can do, and 
that its results answer to the theories about 
it. It must be partly due to the want of 
proper training in the public schools that there 
are so few readers of discrimination, and that 
the general taste, judged by the sort of books 
now read, is so mediocre. Most of the public 
schools teach reading, or have taught it, so 
poorly that the scholars who come from them 
cannot read easily; hence they must have 
spice, and blood, and vice to stimulate them, 
just as a man who has lost taste peppers his 
food. We need not agree with those who say 
that there is no merit whatever in the mere 
ability to read, nor, on the other hand, can we 



276 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

join those who say that the art of reading will 
pretty surely encourage a taste for the nobler 
kind of reading, and that the habit of reading 
trash will by-and-by lead the reader to better 
things. As a matter of experience, the reader 
of the namby-pamby does not acquire an ap- 
petite for anything more virile, and the reader 
of the sensational requires constantly more 
highly flavored viands. ]N'or is it reasonable 
to expect good taste to be recovered by an in- 
dulgence in bad taste. 

What, then, does the common school usually 
do for literary taste? Generally there is no 
thought about it. It is not in the minds of 
the majority of teachers, even if they possess 
it themselves. The business is to teach the 
pupils to read ; how they shall use the art of 
reading is little considered. If we examine 
the reading-books from the lowest grade to the 
highest, we shall find that their object is to 
teach words, not literature. The lower-grade 
books are commonly inane (I will not say child- 
ish, for that is a libel on the open minds of 
children) beyond description. There is an im- 
pression that advanced readers have improved 
much in quality within a few years, and doubt- 
less some of them do contain specimens of 
better literature than their predecessors. But 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 277 

they are on the old plan, which must be radi- 
cally modified or entirely cast aside, and doubt- 
less will be when the new method is compre- 
hended, and teachers are well enough furnished 
to cut loose from the machine. We may say 
that to learn how to read, and not what to 
read, is confessedly the object of these books ; 
but even this object is not attained. There is 
an endeavor to teach how to call the words 
of a reading-book, but not to teach how to 
read ; for reading involves, certainly for the 
older scholars, the combination of known 
words to form new ideas. This is lacking. 
The taste for good literature is not developed ; 
the habit of continuous pursuit of a subject, 
with comprehension of its relations, is not ac- 
quired; and no conception is gained of the en- 
tirety of literature or its importance to human 
life. Consequently, there is no power of judg- 
ment or faculty of discrimination. 

Now, this radical defect can be easily reme- 
died if the school authorities only clearly ap- 
prehend one truth, and that is that the minds 
of children of tender age can be as readily 
interested and permanently interested in good 
literature as in the dreary feebleness of the 
juvenile reader. The mind of the ordinary 
child should not be judged by the mind that 



278 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

produces stuff of this sort : " Little Jimmy had 
a little Avhite pig." " Did the little pig know 
Jimmy ?" " Yes, the little pig knew Jimmy, 
and would come when he called." " How did 
little Jimmy know his pig from the other little 
pigs?" "By the twist in his tail." ("Chil- 
dren," asks the teacher, " what is the meaning 
of ' twist ' ?") " Jimmy liked to stride the little 
pig's back." " Would the little pig let him?" 
" Yes, when he was absorbed eating his 
dinner." (" Children, what is the meaning of 
* absorbed ' ?") And so on. 

This intellectual exercise is, perhaps, read 
to children who have not got far enough in 
" word -building" to read themselves about 
little Jimmy and his absorbed pig. It may be 
continued, together with word - learning, until 
the children are able to say (is it reading ?) the 
entire volume of this precious stuff. To what 
end? The children are only languidly inter- 
ested ; their minds are not awakened ; the 
imagination is not appealed to; they have 
learned nothing, except probably some new 
words, which are learned as signs. Often chil- 
dren have only one book even of this sort, at 
which they are kept until they learn it through 
by heart, and they have been heard to "read" 
it with the book bottom side up or shut ! All 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 279 

these books cultivate inattention and intel- 
lectual vacancy. They are — the best of them 
— only reading exercises ; and reading is not 
perceived to have any sort of value. The 
child is not taught to think, and not a step is 
taken in informing him of his relation to the 
world about him. His education is not begun. 
JSTow it happens that children go on with 
this sort of reading and the ordinary text- 
books through the grades of the district 
school into the high school, and come to the 
ages of seventeen and eighteen without the 
least conception of literature, or of art, or of 
the continuity of the relations of history ; are 
ignorant of the great names which illuminate 
the ages ; have never heard of Socrates, or of 
Phidias, or of Titian ; do not know whether 
Franklin was an Englishman or an American ; 
would be puzzled to say whether it was Ben 
Franklin or Ben Jonson who invented light- 
ning — think it was Ben Somebody; cannot tell 
whether they lived before or after Christ, and 
indeed never have thought that anything 
happened before the time of Christ ; do not 
know who was on the throne of Spain when 
Columbus discovered America — and so on. 
These are not imagined instances. The chil- 
dren referred to are in good circumstances 



280 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

and hav,e had fairly intelligent associations, 
but their education has been intrusted to the 
schools. They know nothing except their 
text-books, and they know these simply for 
the purpose of examination. Such pupils come 
to the age of eighteen with not only no taste 
for the best reading, for the reading of books, 
but without the ability to be interested even 
in fiction of the first class, because it is full of 
allusions .that convey nothing to their minds. 
The stories they read, if they read at all — the 
novels, so called, that they have been brought 
up on— ^are the diluted and feeble fictions that 
flood the country, and that scarcely rise above 
the intellectual level of Jimmy and the ab- 
sorbed pig. 

It has been demonstrated by experiment 
that it is as ^asy to begin with good htera- 
ture as wijth the sort of reading described. It 
makes little difference where the beginning is 
made. Any good book, any real book, is an 
open door into the wide field of literature ; 
that is to say, of history — that is to say, of in- 
terest in the entire human race. Kead to 
children of tender years, the same day, the 
story of Jimmy and a Greek myth, or an 
episode from the Odyssey, or any genuine bit 
of human nature and life ; and ask the children 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 281 

next day which they wish to hear again. Al- 
most all of them will call for the repetition of 
the real thing, the verity of which they recog- 
nize, and which has appealed to their imagi- 
nations. But this is not all. If the subject is 
a Greek myth, they speedily come to com- 
prehend its meaning, and by the aid of the 
teacher to trace its development elsewhere, to 
understand its historic significance, to have the 
mind filled with images of beauty and wonder. 
Is it the Homeric story of Nausicaa ? What a 
picture ! How speedily Greek history opens to 
the mind ! How readily the children acquire 
knowledge of the great historic names, and see 
how their deeds and their thoughts are related 
to our deeds and our thoughts ! It is as easy 
to know about Socrates as about Franklin and 
General Grant. Having the mind open to 
other times and to the significance of great 
men in history, how much more clearly they 
comprehend Franklin and Grant and Lincoln! 
I^or is this all. The young mind is open to 
noble thoughts, to high conceptions; it fol- 
lows by association easily along the historic 
and literary line; and not only do great 
names and fine pieces of literature become fa- 
miliar, but the meaning of the continual life in 
the world begins to be apprehended. This is 



282 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

not at all a fancy sketch. The writer has 
seen the whole assembly of pupils in a school 
of six hundred, of all the eight grades, intel- 
ligently interested in a talk which contained 
classical and literary allusions that would have 
been incomprehensible to an ordinary school 
brought up on the ordinary readers and text- 
books. 

But the reading need not be confined to the 
classics nor to the masterpieces of literature. 
ISTatural history — generally the most fascinat- 
ing of subjects — can be taught; interest in 
flowers and trees and birds and the habits of 
animals can be awakened by reading the es- 
says of literary men on these topics as they 
never can be by the dry text -books. The 
point I wish to make is that real literature for 
the young, literature which is almost absolute- 
ly neglected in the public schools, except in a 
scrappy way as a reading exercise, is the best 
open-door to the development of the mind and 
to knowledge of all sorts. The unfolding of a 
Greek myth leads directly to art, to love of 
beauty, to knowledge of historj^, to an under- 
standing of ourselves. But whatever the be- 
ginning is, whether a classic myth, a Homeric 
epic, a play of Sophocles, the story of the life 
and death of Socrates, a mediaeval legend, or 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 283 

any genuine piece of literature from the time 
of Yirgil down to our own, it may not so 
much matter (except that it is better to begin 
with the ancients in order to gain a proper 
perspective) — whatever the beginning is, it 
should be the best literature. The best is not 
too good for the youngest child. Simplicity, 
which commonly characterizes greatness, is 
of course essential. But never was a greater 
mistake made than in thinking that a youth- 
ful mind needs watering with the slops ordi- 
narily fed to it. Even children in the kinder- 
garten are eager for Whittier's Barefoot Boy 
and Longfellow's Hiawatha. It requires, I 
repeat, little more pains to create a good taste 
in reading than a bad taste. 

It would seem that in the complete organi- 
zation of the public schools all education of 
the pupil is turned over to them as it was not 
formerly, and it is possible that in the stress 
of text -book education there is no time for 
reading at home. The competent teachers 
contend not merely with the difficulty of the 
lack of books and the deficiencies of those in 
use, but with the more serious difficulty of the 
erroneous ideas of the function of text-books. 
They will cease to be a commercial commodity 
of so much value as now when teachers teach. 



284 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

If it is true that there is no time for reading 
at home, we can account for the deplorable lack 
of taste in the great mass of the reading public 
educated at the common schools ; and we can 
see exactly what the remedy should be — name- 
ly, the teaching of the literature at the begin- 
ning of school life, and following it up broad- 
ly and intelligently during the whole school 
period. It will not crowd out anything else, 
because it underlies everything. After many 
years of perversion and neglect, to take up 
the study of literature in a comprehensive 
text -book, as if it were to be learned like 
arithmetic, is a ludicrous proceeding. This is 
not teaching literature nor giving the scholar 
a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing 
the mind with names and dates, which are not 
seen to have an}^ relation to present life, and 
which speedily fade out of the mind. The 
love of literature is not to be attained in this 
way, nor in any way except by reading the best 
literature. 

The notion that literature can be taken up 
as a branch of education, and learned at the 
proper time and when studies permit, is one 
of the most farcical in our scheme of edu- 
cation. It is only matched in absurdity by 
the other current idea, that literature is some- 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 285 

thing separate and apart from general knowl- 
edge. Here is the whole body of accumulated 
thought and experience of all the ages, which 
indeed forms our present life and explains it, 
existing partly in tradition and training, but 
more largely in books ; and most teachers 
think, and most pupils are led to believe, that 
this most important former of the mind, maker 
of character, and guide to action can be ac- 
quired in a certain number of lessons out of 
a text-book ! Because this is so, young men 
and young women come up to college almost 
absolutely ignorant of the history of their 
race and of the ideas that have made our 
civilization. Some of them have never read 
a book, except the text- books on the special- 
ties in which they have prepared themselves 
for examination. We have a saying concern- 
ing people whose minds appear to be made up 
of dry, isolated facts, that they have no at- 
mosphere. Wei], literature is the atmosphere. 
In it we live, and move, and have our being, 
intellectually. The first lesson read to, or 
read by, the child should begin to put him 
in relation with the world and the thought 
of the w^orld. 

This cannot be done except by the living 
teacher. ISTo text-book, no one reading-book 



286 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

or series of reading-books, will do it. If the 
teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, 
the teacher is an uninspired machine. We 
must revise our notions of the function of the 
teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to 
present evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where 
will he or she find it ? Why, in experimental 
science, if you please, in history, but, in short, 
in good literature, using the word in its broad- 
est sense. The object in selecting reading for 
children is to make it impossible for them to 
see any evidence except the best. That is the 
teacher's business, and how few understand 
their business ! How few are educated ! In 
the best literature we find truth about the 
world, about human nature; and hence, if 
children read that, they read what their ex- 
perience will verify. I am told that publish- 
ers are largely at fault for the quality of the 
reading used in schools — that schools would 
gladly receive the good literature if they could 
get it. But I do not know, in this case, how 
much the demand has to do with the supply. 
I am certain, however, that educated teachers 
would use only the best means for forming the 
minds and enlightening the understanding of 
their pupils. It must be kept in mind that 
reading, silent reading done by the scholar, 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 287 

is not learning signs and calling words; it 
is getting thought. If children are to get" 
thought, they should be served with the best 
— that which will not only be true, but appeal 
so naturally to their minds that they will pre- 
fer it to all meaner stuff. If it is true that 
children cannot acquire this taste at home — 
and it is true for the vast majority of Amer- 
ican children — then it must be given in the 
public schools. To give it is not to interrupt 
the acquisition of other knowledge ; it is liter- 
ally to open the door to all knowledge. 

When this truth is recognized in the common 
schools, and literature is given its proper place, 
not only for the development of the mind, 
but as the most easily-opened door to history, 
art, science, general intelligence, we shall see 
the taste of the reading public in the United 
States undergo a mighty change. It will not 
care for the fiction it likes at present, and 
which does little more than enfeeble its 
powers ; and then there can be no doubt that 
fiction will rise to supply the demand for 
something better. When the trash does not 
sell, the trash will not be produced, and those 
who are only capable of supplying the present 
demand will perhaps find a more useful occu- 
pation. It will be again evident that literature 



288 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar 
powers and patient training. When people 
know how to read, authors will need to know 
how to write. 

In all other pursuits we carefully study the 
relation of supply to demand. Why not in 
literature? Formerly, when readers were 
comparatively few, and were of a class that 
had leisure and the opportunity of cultivating 
the taste, books were generally written for 
this class, and aimed at its real or supposed 
capacities. If the age was coarse in speech 
or specially affected in manner, the books fol- 
lowed the lead given by the demand; but, 
coarse or affected, they had the quality of art 
demanded by the best existing cultivation. 
Naturally, when the art of reading is acquired 
by the great mass of the people, whose taste 
ha-s not been cultivated, the supply for this 
increased demand will, more or less, follow 
the level of its intelligence. After our civil 
war there was a patriotic desire to commem- 
orate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in 
monuments, and the deeds of our great cap- 
tains in statues. This noble desire was not 
usually accompanied by artistic discrimination, 
and the land is filled with monuments and 
statues which express the gratitude of the 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 289 

people. The coming age may wish to replace 
them by images and structures which will ex- 
press gratitude and patriotism in a higher 
because more artistic form. In the matter of 
art the development is distinctly reflex. The 
exhibition of works of genius will slowly in- 
struct and elevate the popular taste, and in 
time the cultivated popular taste will reject 
mediocrity and demand better things. Only 
a little while ago few people in the United 
States knew how to draw, and only a few could 
tell good drawing from bad. To realize the 
change that has taken place, we have only to 
recall the illustrations in books, magazines, 
and comic newspapers of less than a quarter 
of a century ago. Foreign travel, foreign 
study, and the importation of works of art 
(still bhndly restricted by the American Con- 
gress) were the lessons that began to work a 
change. 'Now, in all our large towns, and 
even in hundreds of villages, there are well- 
established art schools ; in the greater cities, 
unions and associations, under the guidance 
of skilful artists, where five or six hundred 
young men and women are diligently, day 
and night, learning the rudiments of art. The 
result is already apparent. Excellent drawing 
is seen in illustrations for books and magazines, 

19 



290 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

in the satirical and comic publications, even 
in the advertisements and theatrical posters. 
At our present rate of progress, the drawings 
in all our amusing weeklies will soon be as 
good as those in the Fliegende Blatter. The 
change is marvellous ; and the popular taste 
has so improved that it would not be profit- 
able to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations 
of twenty years ago. But as to fiction, even 
if the writers of it were all trained in it as an 
art, it is not so easy to lift the public taste to 
their artistic level. The best supply in this 
case will only very slowly affect the quality 
of the demand. "When the poor novel sells 
vastly better than the good novel, the poor 
will be produced to supply the demand, the 
general taste will be still further lowered, and 
the power of discrimination fade out more 
and more. What is true of the novel is true 
of all other literature. Taste for it must be 
cultivated in childhood. The common schools 
must do for literature what the art schools 
are doing for art. Not every one can become 
an artist, not every one can become a writer — 
though this is contrary to general opinion; 
but knowledge to distinguish good drawing 
from bad can be acquired by most people, and 
there are probably few minds that cannot, by 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 291 

right methods applied early, be led to prefer 
good literature, and to have an enjoyment in 
it in proportion to its sincerity, naturalness, 
verity, and truth to life. 

It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the 
American novel needs for its development is 
an audience, but it is safe to say that an audi- 
ence would greatly assist it. Evidence is on 
all sides of a fresh, new, wonderful artistic 
development in America in drawing, painting, 
sculpture, in instrumental music and singing, 
and in literature. The promise of this is not 
only in the climate, the free republican oppor- 
tunity, the mixed races blending the traditions 
and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but it 
is in a certain temperament which we already 
recognize as American. It is an artistic ten- 
dency. This was first most noticeable in Amer- 
ican women, to whom the art of dress seemed 
to come by nature, and the art of being agree- 
able to be easily acquired. 

Already writers have arisen who illustrate 
this artistic tendency in novels, and especially 
in short stories. They have not appeared to 
owe their origin to any special literary centre ; 
they have come forward in the South, the 
West, the East. Their writings have to a 
great degree (considering our pupilage to the 



292 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

literature of Great Britain, which is prolonged 
by the lack of an international copyright) the 
stamp of originahty, of naturalness, of sin- 
cerity, of an attempt to give the facts of life 
with a sense of their artistic value. Their 
affiliation is rather with the new literatures 
of France, of Eussia, of Spain, than with the 
modern fiction of England. They have to 
compete in the market with the uncopy righted 
literature of all other lands, good and bad, 
especially bad, which is sold for little more 
than the cost of the paper it is printed on, and 
badly printed at that. But besides this fact, 
and owing to a public taste not cultivated or 
not corrected in the public schools, their books 
do not sell in anything hke the quantity that 
the inferior, mediocre, other home novels sell. 
Indeed, but for the intervention of the maga- 
zines, few of the best writers of novels and 
short stories could earn as much as the day 
laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all 
of whom are, or have been, in reach of the 
common school, it must be confessed that 
their audience is small. 

This relation between the fiction that is, and 
that which is to be, and the common school 
is not fanciful. The lack in the general read- 
ing public, in the novels read by the greater 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 293 

number of people, and in the common school 
is the same — the lack of inspiration and ideal- 
ity. The common school does not cultivate 
the literary sense, the general public lacks 
literary discrimination, and the stories and 
tales either produced by or addressed to those 
who have little ideality simply respond to the 
demand of the times. 

It is already evident, both in positive and 
negative results, both in the schools and the 
general public taste, that literature cannot be 
set aside in the scheme of education; nay, 
that it is of the first importance. The teacher 
must be able to inspire the pupil ; not only to 
awaken eagerness to know, but to kindle the 
imagination. The value of the Hindoo or 
the Greek myth, of the Koman story, of the 
mediaeval legend, of the heroic epic, of the 
lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any 
genuine piece of literature, ancient or modern, 
is not in the knowledge of it as we may know 
the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the 
formulas of a science, but in the enlargement 
of the mind to a conception of the life and 
development of the race, to a study of the 
motives of human action, to a comprehension 
of history ; so that the mind is not simply 
enriched, but becomes discriminating, and 



294 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

able to estimate the value of events and opin- 
ions. This office for the mind acquaintance 
with literature can alone perform. So that, 
in school, literature is not only, as I have said, 
the easiest open-door to all else desirable, the 
best literature is not only the best means of 
awakening the young mind, the stimulus most 
congenial, but it is the best foundation for 
broad and generous culture. Indeed, without 
its co-ordinating influence the education of 
the common school is a thing of shreds and 
patches. Besides, the mind aroused to historic 
consciousness, kindled in itself by the best 
that has been said and done in all ages, is 
more apt in the pursuit, intelligently, of any 
specialty; so that the shortest road to the 
practical education so much insisted on in 
these days begins in the awakening of the 
faculties in the manner described. There is 
no doubt of the value of manual training as 
an aid in giving definiteness, directness, exact- 
ness to the mind, but mere technical training 
alone will be barren of those results, in general 
discriminating culture, which we hope to see 
in America. 

The common school is a machine of incal- 
culable value. It is not, however, automatic. 
If it is a mere machine, it will do little more 



THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL 295 

to lift the nation than the mere ability to read 
will lift it. It can easily be made to inculcate 
a taste for good literature ; it can be a power- 
ful influence in teaching the American people 
what to read ; and upon a broadened, elevated, 
discriminating public taste depends the fate of 
American art, of American fiction. 

It is not an inappropriate corollary to be 
drawn from this that an elevated public taste 
will bring about a truer estimate of the value 
of a genuine literary product. An invention 
which increases or cheapens the conveniences 
or comforts of life may be a fortune to its 
originator. A book which amuses, or con- 
soles, or inspires; which contributes to the 
highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds 
of thousands of people ; which furnishes sub- 
stance for thought or for conversation ; which 
dispels the cares and lightens the burdens of 
life ; which is a friend when friends fail, a 
companion when other intercourse wearies or 
is impossible, for a year, for a decade, for a 
generation perhaps, in a world which has a 
proper sense of values, will bring a like com- 
petence to its author. 

(1S90.) 



A NIGHT IN THE GAEDEN OF THE 
TUILERIES 



A NIGHT IN THE GAKDEN OF THE 
TUILERIES 

It was in the time of the Second Empire. 
To be exact, it was the night of the 18th of 
June, 1868; I remember the date, because, 
contrary to the astronomical theory of short 
nights at this season, this was the longest 
night I ever saw. It was the loveliest time 
of the year in Paris, when one was tempted 
to lounge all day in the gardens and to give 
to sleep none of the balmy nights in this gay 
capital, where the night was illuminated like 
the day, and some new pleasure or delight 
always led along the sparkling hours. Any 
day the Garden of the Tuileries was a micro- 
cosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned 
itself; through it the promenaders flowed from 
the Eue de Kivoli gate by the palace to the 
entrance on the Place de la Concorde, out 
to the Champs-filysees and back again ; here 
in the north grove gathered thousands to 
hear the regimental band in the afternoon; 



300 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

children chased butterflies about the flower- 
beds and amid the tubs of orange - trees ; 
travellers, guide-book in hand, stood resolute- 
ly and incredulously before the groups of stat- 
uary, wondering what that Infant was do- 
ing with the snakes and why the recumbent 
figure of the ISTile should have so many chil- 
dren climbing over him ; or watched the long 
fa9ade of the palace hour after hour, in the 
hope of catching at some window the flutter 
of a royal robe ; and swarthy, turbaned Zou- 
aves, erect, lithe, insouciant, with the firm, 
springy step of the tiger, lounged along the 
allees. 

JSTapoleon was at home — a fact attested by a 
reversal of the hospitable rule of democracy, 
no visitors being admitted to the palace 
when he was at home. The private garden, 
close to the imperial residence, was also 
closed to the public, who in vain looked 
across the sunken fence to the parterres, 
fountains, and statues, in the hope that the 
mysterious man would come out there and 
publicly enjoy himself. But he never came, 
though I have no doubt that he looked out 
of the windows upon the beautiful garden 
and his happy Parisians, upon the groves of 
horse - chestnuts, the needle - like fountain be- 



A NIGHT IN THE GAEDEN OF THE TUILERIES 301 

youd, the Column of Luxor, up the famous 
and shining vista terminated by the Arch 
of the Star, and reflected with Christian com- 
placency upon the greatness of a monarch 
who was the lord of such splendors and the 
goodness of a ruler who opened them all to 
his children. Especially when the western 
sunshine streamed down over it all, turning 
even the dust of the atmosphere into gold 
and emblazoning the windows of the Tuile- 
ries with a sort of historic glory, his heart 
must have swelled within him in throbs of 
imperial exaltation. It is the fashion nowa- 
days not to consider him a great man, but no 
one pretends to measure his goodness. 

The public garden of the Tuileries was 
closed at dusk, no one being permitted to 
remain in it after dark. I suppose it was 
not safe to trust the Parisians in the covert 
of its shades after nightfall, and no one 
could tell what foreign fanatics and assassins 
might do if they were permitted to pass the 
night so near the imperial residence. At 
any rate, everybody was drummed out be- 
fore the twilight fairly began, and at the most 
fascinating hour for dreaming in the ancient 
garden. After sundown the great door of 
the Pavilion de I'llorloge swung open and 



302 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

there issued from it a drum - corps, which 
marched across the private garden and down 
the broad allee of the pubhc garden, drum- 
ming as if the Judgment -day were at hand, 
straight to the great gate of the Place de 
la Concorde, and returning by a side allee, 
beating up every covert and filling all the 
air with clamor until it disappeared, still 
thumping, into the court of the palace ; and 
all the square seemed to ache with the sound. 
I^ever was there such pounding since Thack- 
eray's old Pierre, who, "just to keep up his 
drumming, one day drummed down the Bas- 
tille": 

At midnight I beat the tattoo, 
And woke up the Pikemen of Paris 
To follow the bold Barbaroux. 

On the waves of this drumming the people 
poured out from every gate of the garden, un- 
til the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes 
closed the portals for the night. Before the 
lamps were lighted along the Kue de Eivoli 
and in the great square of the Eevolution, 
the garden was left to the silence of its statues 
and its thousand memories. I often used to 
wonder, as I looked through the iron railing 
at nightfall, what might go on there and 



A NIGHT IN THE GAKDEN OF THE TtJILERIES 303 

whether historic shades might not flit about 
in the ghostly walks. 

Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, 
after a long walk through the galleries of 
the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat 
down to rest on a secluded bench in the 
southern grove of the garden, hidden from 
view by the tree-trunks. Where I sat I could 
see the old men and children in that sunny 
flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I 
could see the great fountain-basin facing the 
Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard 
the evening drumming, which was the signal 
for me to quit the garden ; for I suppose even 
the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive 
to the throb of the glory-calling drum. But 
if I did hear it, it was only like an echo of 
the past, and I did not heed it any more than 
Napoleon in his tomb at the Invalides heeds, 
through the drawn curtain, the chanting of 
the daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I 
must have slept soundly. 

When I awoke it was dark under the trees. 
I started up and went into the broad prom- 
enade. The garden was deserted ; I could 
hear the plash of the fountains, but no other 
sound therein. Lights were gleaming from 
the windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed 



804 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

along the Kue de Rivoli, dotted the great 
Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs- 
Elysees. There were the steady roar of wheels 
and the tramping of feet without, but within 
was the stillness of death. 

What should I do? I am not naturally 
nervous, but to be caught lurking in the Tui- 
leries Garden in the night would involve me 
in the gravest peril. The simple w^ay would 
have been to have gone to the gate nearest 
the Pavilion de Marsan, and said to the po- 
liceman on duty there that I had inadver- 
tently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide- 
awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went 
to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would 
like to get out. I walked down near enough 
to the gate to see the policeman, but my 
courage failed. Before I could stammer out 
half that explanation to him in his trifling 
language (which foreigners are mockingly told 
is the best in the world for conversation), he 
would either have slipped his hateful rapier 
through my body, or have raised an alarm and 
called out the guards of the palace to hunt me 
down like a rabbit. 

A man in the Tuileries Garden at night! 
an assassin I a conspirator ! one of the Carbo- 
nari, perhaps a dozen of them — who knows? — 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILEEIES 305 

Orsini bombs, gunpowder, Greek -fire, Polish 
refugees, murder, eme^Ues, revolution ! 

No, I'm not going to speak to that person 
in the cocked hat and dress-coat under these 
circumstances. Conversation with him out of 
the best phrase-books would be uninteresting. 
Diplomatic row between the two countries 
would be the least dreaded result of it. A 
suspected conspirator against the life of Na- 
poleon, Avithout a chance for explanation, I 
saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched 
(my minute notes of the Tuileries confiscated), 
and trundled off to the Conciergerie, and hung 
up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, like 
Kavaillac. 

I drew back into the shade and rapidly 
walked to the western gate. It was closed, of 
course. On the gate-piers stand the winged 
steeds of Marly, never less admired than by 
me at that moment. They interested me less 
than a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who 
lounged outside, guarding the entrance from 
the square, and unsuspicious that any assassin 
was trying to get out. I could see the gleam 
of the lamps on their bayonets and hear their 
soft tread. Ask them to let me out ? How 
nimbly they would have scaled the fence and 
transfixed me ! They like to do such things. 

20 



306 RELATION OF LITEKATUKE HO LIFE 

'No, no — whatever I do, I must keep away 
from the clutches of these cats of Africa. 

And enough there was to do, if I had been in 
a mind to do it. All the seats to sit in, all the 
statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell. 
The southern terrace overlooking the Seine 
was closed, or I might have amused myself 
with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial 
that ran nearly the whole length of it, with 
its switches and turnouts and houses ; or I 
might have passed delightful hours there 
watching the lights along the river and the 
blazing illumination on the amusement halls. 
But I ascended the famihar northern terrace 
and wandered amid its bowers, in company 
with Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I 
I knew only by sight, smelling the orange- 
blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the old 
riding - school where the National Assembl}^ 
sat in 1Y89. 

It must have been eleven o'clock when I 
found myself down by the private garden next 
the palace. Many of the lights in the offices 
of the household had been extinguished, but 
the private apartments of the Emperor in the 
wing south of the central pavilion were still 
illuminated. The Emperor evidently had not 
so much desire to go to bed as I had. I knew 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILEEIES 307 

the windows of his petits appartements — as 
what good American did not? — and I wondered 
if he was just then taking a little supper, if he 
had bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was 
alone in his room, reflecting upon his grandeur 
and thinking what suit he should wear on the 
morrow in his ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was 
dictating an editorial for the official journal ; 
perhaps he was according an interview to the 
correspondent of the London Glorifier ; per- 
haps one of the Abbotts was with him. Or 
was he composing one of those important 
love-letters of state to Madame Blank which 
have since delighted the lovers of literature? 
I am not a spy, and I scorn to look into peo- 
ple's windows late at night, but I was lone- 
some and hungry, and all that square round 
about swarmed with imperial guards, police- 
men, keen-scented Zouaves, and nobody knows 
what other suspicious folk. If ISTapoleon had 
known that there was a 

MAN IN THE GARDEN ! 

I suppose he would have called up his family, 
waked the drum-corps, sent for the Prefect of 
Police, put on the alert the sergents de ville, 
ordered under arms a regiment of the Imperial 
Guards, and made it unpleasant for the Man. 



308 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

All these thoughts passed through my mind, 
not with the rapidity of lightning, as is usual 
in such cases, but with the slowness of con- 
viction. If I should be discovered, death 
would only stare me in the face about a min- 
ute. If he waited five minutes, who would 
believe my story of going to sleep and not 
hearing the drums ? And if it were true, why 
didn't I go at once to the gate, and not lurk 
round there all night like another Clement? 
And then I w^ondered if it was not the dis- 
agreeable habit of some night-patrol or other 
to beat round the garden before the Sire went 
to bed for good, to find just such characters as 
I was gradually getting to feel myself to be. 

But nobody came. Twelve o'clock, one 
o'clock sounded from the tower of the church 
of St.- Germain -I'Auxerrois, from whose bel- 
fry the signal was given for the beginning of 
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew — the same 
bells that tolled all that dreadful night while 
the slaughter went on, w^hile the effeminate 
Charles IX. fired from the windows of the 
Louvre upon stray fugitives on the quay — 
bells the reminiscent sound of which, a legend 
(which I fear is not true) says, at length drove 
Catharine de' Medici from the Tuileries. 

One o'clock ! The lights were going out 



A NIGHT IN THE GAEDEN OF THE TUILERIES 309 

in the Tuileries, had nearly all gone out. I 
wondered if the suspicious and timid and 
Tvasteful Emperor would keep the gas burn- 
ing all night in his room. The night-roar of 
Paris still went on, sounding alwaj^s to for- 
eign ears like the beginning of a revolution. 
As I stood there, looking at the window that 
interested me most, the curtains were drawn, 
the window was opened, and a form appeared 
in a white robe. I had never seen the Em- 
peror before in a night-gown, but I should 
have known him among a thousand. The Man 
of Destiny had on a white cotton night-cap, 
with a peaked top and no tassel. It was the 
most natural thing in the world ; he was tak- 
ing a last look over his restless Paris before 
he turned in. What if he should see me ! I 
respected that last look and withdrew into the 
shadow. Tired and hungry, I sat down to 
reflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital. 

One o'clock and a half ! I had presence of 
mind enough to wind my watch ; indeed, I was 
not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily 
on my hands. It %oas a gay capital. "Would 
it never put out its lights, and cease its uproar, 
and leave me to my reflections ? In less than 
an hour the country legions would invade the 
city, the market-wagons would rumble down 



310 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

the streets, the vegetable-man and the straw- 
berry-woman, the fishmongers and the greens- 
venders would begin their melodious cries, 
and there would be no repose for a man even 
in a public garden. It is secluded enough, 
with the gates locked, and there is plenty of 
room to turn over and change position ; but 
it is a wakeful situation at the best, a haunting 
sort of place, and I was not sure it was not 
haunted. 

I had often wondered, as I strolled about the 
place in the daytime or peered through the iron 
fence at dusk, if strange things did not go on 
here at night, with this crowd of effigies of per- 
sons historical and more or less mythological, 
in this garden peopled with the representatives 
of the dead, and no doubt by the shades of 
king^ and queens and courtiers, intrigantes and 
panders, priests and soldiers, who lived once 
in this old pile — real shades, which are always 
invisible in the sunlight. They have local at- 
tachments, I suppose. Can science tell when 
they depart forever from the scenes of their ob- 
jective intrusion into the affairs of this world, 
or how long they are permitted to revisit 
them ? Is it true that in certain spiritual states, 
say of isolation or intense nervous alertness, 
we can see them as they can see each other ? 



A NIGHT IN THE GAKDEN OF THE TUILERIES 311 

There was I — the I catalogued in the police 
description — present in that garden, yet so 
earnestly longing to be somewhere else that 
would it be wonderful if my eidolon was some- 
where else and could be seen ? — though not 
by a policeman, for policemen have no spirit- 
ual vision. 

There were no policemen in the garden, that 
I was certain of ; but a little after half-past 
one I saw a Man, not a man I had ever seen 
before, clad in doublet and hose, with a short 
cloak and a felt cap with a white plume, come 
out of the Pavilion de Flore and turn down 
the quay towards the house — I had seen that 
afternoon where it stood — of the beautiful 
Gabrielle d'Estrees. I might have been mis- 
taken but for the fact that, just at this moment, 
a window opened in the wing of the same 
pavilion, and an effeminate, boyish face, weak 
and cruel, with a crown on its head, appeared 
and looked down into the shadow of the build- 
ing as if its owner saw what I had seen. And 
there was nothing remarkable in this, except 
that nowadays kings do not wear crowns at 
night. It occurred to me that there was a 
masquerade going on in the Tuileries, though 
I heard no music, except the tinkle of, it might 
be, a harp, or "the lascivious pleasing of a 



312 RELATION OF LITEKATUEE TO LIFE 

lute," and I walked along down towards the 
central pavilion. I was just in time to see two 
ladies emerge from it and disappear, whisper- 
ing together, in the shrubbery; the one old, 
tall, and dark, with the Itahan complexion, 
in a black robe, and the other young, jpetite, 
extraordinarily handsome, and clad in light 
and bridal stuffs, yet both with the same wily 
look that set me thinking on poisons, and 
with a grace and a subtle carriage of deceit 
that could be common only to mother and 
daughter. I didn't choose to walk any farther 
in the part of the garden they had chosen for 
a night promenade, and turned off abruptly. 

What? 

There, on the bench of the marble hemi- 
cycle in the north grove, sat a row of gray- 
beards, old men in the costume of the first 
Ee volution, a sort of serene and benignant 
Areopagus. In the cleared space before them 
were a crowd of youths and maidens, specta- 
tors and participants in the Floral Games 
which were about to commence; behind the 
old men stood attendants who bore chaplets 
of flowers, the prizes in the games. The 
young men wore short red tunics with copper 
belts, formerly worn by Eoman lads at the 
ludi, and the girls tunics of white with loos- 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES 313 

ened girdles, leaving their limbs unrestrained 
for dancing, leaping, or running ; their hair 
was confined only hy a fillet about the head. 
The pipers began to play and the dancers to 
move in rhythmic measures, with the slow and 
languid grace of those full of sweet wine and 
the new joy of the Spring, according to the 
habits of the Golden Age, which had come 
again by decree in Paris. This was the be- 
ginning of the classic sports, but it is not pos- 
sible for a modern pen to describe particu- 
larly the Floral Games. I remember that 
the Convention ordered the placing of these 
hemicycles in the garden, and they were exe- 
cuted from Kobespierre's designs ; but I sup- 
pose I am the only person who ever saw the 
games played that were expected to be played 
before them. It was a curious coincidence 
that the little livid-green man was also there, 
leaning against a tree and looking on with 
a half sneer. It seemed to me an odd classic 
revival, but then Paris has spasms of that, at 
the old Theatre Franyais and elsewhere. 

Pipes in the garden, lutes in the palace, 
paganism, Kevolution — the situation was be- 
coming mixed, and I should not have been 
surprised at a ghostly procession from the 
Place de la Concorde, through the western 



314 RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE 

gates, of the thousands of headless nobility, 
victims of the axe and the basket ; but, thank 
Heaven, nothing of that sort appeared to add 
to the wonders of the night ; yet, as I turned 
a moment from the dancers, I thought I saw 
something move in the shrubbery. The Laoc- 
oon? It could not be. The arms moving? 
Yes. As I drew nearer the arms distinctly 
moved, putting away at length the coiling 
serpent, and pushing from the pedestal the 
old-men boys, his comrades in agony. Laoc- 
oon shut his mouth, which had been stretched 
open for about eighteen centuries, untwisted 
the last coil of the snake, and stepped down, 
a free man. After this it did not surprise me 
to see Spartacus also step down and approach 
him, and the two ancients square off for fisti- 
cuffs, as if they had done it often before, en- 
joying at night the release from the everlast- 
ing pillory of art. It was the hour of releases, 
and I found myself in a moment in the midst 
of a " classic revival," whimsical beyond de- 
scription. iEneas hastened to deposit his aged 
father in a heap on the gravel and ran after 
the Sylvan l^ymphs ; Theseus gave the Mino- 
taur a respite ; Themistocles was bending over 
the dying Spartan, who was coming to life ; 
Yenus Pudica was waltzing about the diagonal 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILEEIES 315 

basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing 
marbles with the infant Hercules. In this un- 
real phantasmagoria it was a relief to me to see 
walking in the area of the private garden two 
men : the one a stately person with a kingly 
air, a handsome face, his head covered with a 
huge wig that fell upon his shoulders ; the 
other a farmer-like man, stout and ungracious, 
the counterpart of the pictures of the intendant 
Colbert. He was pointing up to the palace, 
and seemed to be speaking of some alterations, 
to which talk the other listened impatiently. 
I wondered what ISTapoleon, who by this time 
was probably dreaming of Mexico, would have 
said if he had looked out and seen, not one 
man in the garden, but dozens of men, and all 
the stir that I saw ; if he had known, indeed, 
that the Great Monarch was walking under 
his windows. 

I said it was a relief to me to see two real 
men, but I had no reason to complain of soli- 
tude thereafter till daybreak. That any one 
saw or noticed me I doubt, and I soon became 
so reassured that I had more delight than fear 
in watching the coming and going of per- 
sonages I had supposed dead a hundred years 
and more ; the appearance at windows of faces 
lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the 



316 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

opening of casements and the dropping of 
billets into the garden ; the flutter of disap- 
pearing robes ; the faint sounds of revels from 
the interior of the palace; the hurrying of 
feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, 
that told of partings and sudden armings, and 
the presence of a king that will be denied at 
no doors. I saw through the windows of the 
long Galerie de Diane the roioes of the Eegen- 
Gj at supper, and at table with them a dark, 
semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Eussian 
sable, the coolest head in Europe at a drink- 
ing-bout. I saw enter the south pavilion a 
tall lady in black, with the air of a royal 
procuress; and presently crossed the garden 
and disappeared in the pavilion a young 
Parisian girl, and then another and another, 
a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly 
of the dreadful Pare aux Cerfs at Versailles. 

So wrought upon was I by the sight of 
this infamy that I scarcely noticed the in- 
coming of a royal train at the southern end 
of the palace, and notably in it a lady with 
ligiit hair and noble mien, and the look in 
her face of a hunted lioness at bay. I sa}^ 
scarcely, for hardly had the royal cortege 
passed within, when there arose a great 
clamor in the inner court, like the roar of an 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILEEIES 317 

angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet, 
firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed 
by yells of defiance in mingled French and 
German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from 
doorways and windows, and the flashing of 
flambeaux that ran hither and thither. " Oho !" 
I said, " Paris has come to call upon its sov- 
ereign ; the pikemen of Paris, led by the bold 
Barbaroux." 

The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had 
risen, hushed, I imagined, by the jarring of 
cannon from the direction of St.-Eoch ; and 
in the quiet I saw a little soldier alight at the 
Rue de Rivoli gate — a little man whom you 
might mistake for a corporal of the guard — 
with a wild, coarse - featured Corsican (say, 
rather, Basque) face, his disordered chestnut 
hair darkened to black locks by the use of 
pomatum — a face selfish and false, but deter- 
mined as fate. So this was the beginning of 
the Napoleon " legend " ; and by-and-by this 
coarse head will be idealized into the Roman 
Emperor type, in which I myself might have 
believed but for the revelations of the night 
of strange adventure. 

What is history ? What is this drama and 
spectacle, that has been put forth as histor}^ 
but a cover for pett}^ intrigue, and deceit, and 



318 RELATION OF LITERATUEE TO LIFE 

selfishness, and cruelty? A man shut into 
the Tuileries Garden begins to think that it 
is all an illusion, the trick of a disordered 
fancy. Who was Grand, who was Well- 
Beloved, who was Desired, who was the Idol 
of the French, who was worthy to be called 
a King of the Citizens? Oh for the light of 
day! 

And it came, faint and tremulous, touching 
the terraces of the palace and the Column of 
Luxor. But what procession was that moving 
along the southern terrace? A squad of the 
J^ational Guard on horseback, a score or so of 
King's officers, a King on foot, walking with 
uncertain step, a Queen leaning on his arm, 
both habited in black, moved out of the west- 
ern gate. The King and the Queen paused 
a moment on the very spot where Louis XYI. 
was beheaded, and then got into a carriage 
drawn by one horse and were driven rapidly 
along the quays in the direction of St.-Cloud. 
And again Ee volution, on the heels of the 
fugitives, poured into the old palace and filled 
it with its tatterdemalions. 

Enough for me that daylight began to 
broaden. " Sleep on," I said, " O real Presi- 
dent, real Emperor (by the grace of couj? 
d'etat) at last, in the midst of the most virt- 



A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILEEIES 319 

uous court in Europe, loved of good Ameri- 
cans, eternally established in the hearts of 
your devoted Parisians! Peace to the pal- 
ace and peace to its lovely garden, of both 
of which I have had quite enough for one 
night !" 

The sun came up, and, as I looked about, all 
the shades and concourse of the night had 
vanished. Day had begun in the vast city, 
with all its roar and tumult; but the garden 
gates would not open till seven, and I must 
not be seen before the early stragglers should 
enter and give me a chance of escape. In 
my circumstances I would rather be the first 
to enter than the first to go out in the morn- 
ing, past those lynx-eyed gendarmes. From 
my covert I eagerly watched for my coming 
deliverers. The first to appear was a cMffoii- 
nier^ who threw his sack and pick down by 
the basin, bathed his face, and drank from his 
hand. It seemed to me almost like an act 
of worship, and I would have embraced that 
rag-picker as a brother. But I knew that 
such a proceeding, in the name even of cgalite 
and fraternite would have been misinter- 
preted ; and I waited till two and three and 
a dozen entered by this gate and that, and I 
was at full liberty to stretch my limbs and 



320 RELATION OF LITEEATUEE TO LIFE 

walk out upon the quay as nonchalant as if I 
had been taking a morning stroll. 

I have reason to believe that the police of 
Paris never knew where I spent the night 
of the 18th of June. It must have mystified 
them. 

(1872.) 



THE END 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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